


Signal Lost // Contact Regained

by draculard



Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Animal Deaths, Blood and Gore, Brainwashing, Enemies to Friends, Ezra Bridger's Nonstop Existential Crisis, Fifty Thousand Minor Character Deaths, Flashbacks, Force-Sensitive Thrass, From fishing and hunting and such, Gen, Genocide, Gore, Grief/Mourning, Grysk (Star Wars), Implied/Referenced Slavery, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mass Death, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mind Reading, Moral Dilemmas, Panic Attacks, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Psychological Trauma, Telepathy, Thrawn teaches Ezra Occlumency, Wilderness Survival, Xenophobia, Young Thrawn & Thrass, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 120,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25992955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: “I don’t have a lightsaber, so I can’t practice fighting,” Ezra pointed out. “I don’t have any sacred texts to study. You definitely don’t know anything about the Force, so…”Thrawn’s shoulder twitched in what might have been a minute shrug. “You could read my mind,” he said.At first, Ezra didn’t fully register those words. He interpreted them metaphorically, classified it as a somewhat odd thing for Thrawn to say, and dismissed it. Then Thrawn glanced up, his red eyes burning into Ezra’s, and suddenly Ezra realized he’d missed something.“Read your mind?” he repeated.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Comments: 200
Kudos: 219





	1. Chapter 1

They’d been weaving for hours under the hot sun — which, on this planet, seemed to hover directly above them for at least four hours instead of just around noon — and Ezra’s fingers were starting to turn numb. He grabbed one of the leafy fronds he’d collected this morning, tried to weave it through the others, and felt it slip out of his thick-feeling, clumsy fingers instead.

Frustrated, Ezra sneaked a glance at Thrawn. He stood all the way across the clearing with his back to Ezra, facing the river while he wove. The other mat was piled at his feet, at least five meters longer than the one Ezra was working on, and even though there was a sheen of sweat on Thrawn’s blue skin, he hadn’t slowed down at all. 

Ezra looked back at his own mat, the frond he’d dropped sticking straight up, completely out of place. He quieted his mind, reached out to the sounds of nature all around him — to the moisture gathered in the cells of the dying frond — and used the Force to manipulate it where he wanted it to go.

With that done, he was even more exhausted than before … and it wasn’t like using the Force to weave a covering for their shelter was any great achievement, Ezra noted sourly. In all honesty — and he’d made this clear loudly, and more than once — he wasn’t sure why they needed to make a new shelter, anyway. They’d weathered the deserted planet’s winter just fine in their old one.

The old shelter, though, had been built to retain heat — that’s what Thrawn said. And (again, according to Thrawn) the planet was only going to get hotter from here. Short winters, long summers — how he knew this, Ezra wasn’t exactly sure, but he wasn’t about to question it. 

He tossed the unfinished weaving to the ground and was immediately dissatisfied by the undramatic whispering noise it made.

“I’m taking a break,” he announced. He didn’t expect Thrawn to respond, and Thrawn didn’t. Still, the frustration boiling up inside Ezra practically compelled him to explain himself. “I can’t get this kriffing thing to work,” he said, kicking the mat away from him. “Even when I use the Force, it barely works.”

Not looking back, his voice totally even and sounding only half-awake — like he’d been deep in thought for hours now and hadn’t fully come back — Thrawn said, “It takes practice.”

Ezra eyed the several meters of woven material he’d already completed. “You think?” he said. “Boy, I sure hope I can get some practice someday.”

The sarcasm went unacknowledged. 

“You used the Force to weave?” Thrawn said instead, still not looking away from his own weaving. His arms barely seemed to move as he worked, but as Ezra watched, more and more inches were added to the mat as if by magic.

“What about it?” Ezra asked. For a moment, Thrawn didn’t respond. Ezra edged closer, circling the half-finished shelter and the organized rows of hand-made tools and carefully-measured wooden rods. He came to a stop a few meters away from Thrawn on the bank of the river, leaning against a tree. Thrawn’s eyes swiveled over to him just briefly before returning to the mat in his hands; he was weaving so easily Ezra could only chalk it up to muscle memory.

A month and a half ago, he would have laughed at anyone who suggested Grand Admiral Thrawn could weave a mat based on muscle memory. Then again, a month and a half ago, he never could have predicted he’d be stranded on a deserted planet with Thrawn, either.

Without changing his speed, Thrawn came to the end of the mat — Karabast, Ezra thought, he was done already? — and knotted the ends. Instead of letting the mat fall in a heap at his feet like Ezra had done, he drew the length of it into his arms and walked it over to the shelter, laying it there in neat folds.

“Perhaps you could use the Force to complete tasks quickly,” Thrawn said, “if you hadn’t neglected your training for the past forty-six days.”

Rage broiled up so quickly inside Ezra that for a moment he was completely insensate. His hands clenched into fists and he angled his chin down, forcing himself to take a few deep breaths before he said something that — how had Thrawn put it, their first week here when they couldn’t stop picking fights? Before he said something _unnecessarily provocative_ or of an _inefficient and impedimentary nature._

That _something_ came out anyway.

“You know,” he said, hissing the words between his teeth, “I’m doing my best here, same as you. It’s not like I’m bumming around doing nothing while you get the work done — I’m pulling my weight, okay? And not to be a _nag_ about it, but it’s kind of hard to train when your master is dead.”

If Thrawn realized that it was kind of a dick move to bring up training when it was at least partially his fault that Kanan was dead, he didn’t show it. He examined the mat Ezra had abandoned and, without further comment, set about finishing the work. His face was unreadable — in the silence, Ezra turned away, concentrating fully on his breathing. He’d been kind of quippy in his response, the way he always was — turning his anger into a joke, as much as he could bear to — but where this strategy typically helped him deal with Imperial officers in the past, it never got him very far with Thrawn. And now he was left with the swirling and very real, very not-quippy aftermath of his anger, impossible to let go. 

He allowed Kanan’s face to materialize before him — knew he couldn’t stop it if he wanted to, just like he couldn’t stop the images that followed: Sabine and Hera and Zeb — and then he allowed it to dissolve away, taking his anger with him.

Leaving him cold, his eyes wet, more exhausted than before.

“The absence of a master,” said Thrawn, as if he knew exactly when it was safest to speak, “does not necessitate the end of training. It only necessitates some adaptability and a creative spark.”

Ezra sighed. He let his knees give out beneath him, sinking into the dead brown grass not far from Thrawn. The new growth was coming through in a sort of pale green color, much lighter than the grass on Lothal. He picked at it absently, turning Thrawn’s words over in his head.

“I don’t see what I could really do here,” he said finally. “Except meditate. And I do that already.”

Thrawn gave him a look but said nothing. Still, Ezra felt himself bristling, prepared to snap back if Thrawn even _dared_ to bring up the fact that — so far as either of them could tell — the Grand Admiral spent more time in meditation each day than the Jedi did. 

“I don’t have a lightsaber, so I can’t practice fighting,” Ezra pointed out. “I don’t have any sacred texts to study. _You_ definitely don’t know anything about the Force, so…”

Thrawn’s shoulder twitched in what might have been a minute shrug. 

“You could read my mind,” he said.

At first, Ezra didn’t fully register those words. He interpreted them metaphorically, classified it as a somewhat odd thing for Thrawn to say, and dismissed it. Then Thrawn glanced up, his red eyes burning into Ezra’s, and suddenly Ezra realized he’d missed something.

“Read your _mind_?” he repeated.

“Make an attempt,” said Thrawn evenly. He was still weaving, glancing down at his work occasionally as he waited for Ezra to get started. There was a length of leather cord knotted at the nape of his neck, a tarnished old pendant hanging from it — the Imperial officer version of dogtags, maybe, but Ezra didn’t think so. His eyes caught on it for a moment, remembering how flummoxed he’d been the first time he saw it. It was the first time he’d seen any evidence that Thrawn was a real person, not just an emotionless Imperial drone. And now, weeks later, it was something he was completely used to and hardly noticed anymore, just another normal part of his life here.

“You mean literally?” Ezra asked, deciding to entertain the notion of mind-reading for at least a little while. “Or are you trying to be passive-aggressive here?”

“Passive-aggressive?” Thrawn said.

“Ugh. Nevermind.”

Thrawn eyed Ezra, perhaps waiting for him to explain what he meant. When Ezra stayed silent, Thrawn turned back to his weaving and said, “I did not mean it literally.”

Ezra noted this with some relief.

“I believe minds are not organized like a text to be literally read,” Thrawn continued, “but I’ve been led to believe ‘reading minds’ is a common Basic idiom which means to telepathically observe another being’s mind in order to achieve awareness of said being’s thought process and emotional state. That is what I mean.”

The relief dissipated. 

“Jedi can’t read minds,” said Ezra with as much patience as he could muster (not a lot). “We can influence people sometimes, but it’s not like we can tell what they’re thinking or see their emotions or anything.”

Thrawn glanced up at him, his gaze even and undisturbed. “Perhaps you, as an individual, cannot read minds,” he said. “And perhaps your master, Kanan Jarrus, could not read minds, or felt it unwise to teach you at such a young age. I recall he was not fully trained himself. But it _is_ an established Jedi technique, and I believe with some practice, you may be able to achieve it.”

Ezra scoffed. “What the hell do you know about Jedi techniques?”

Turning his attention back to the woven mat, Thrawn only said, “Enough.”

“Have you ever even _met_ a Jedi?” Ezra asked. He heard the challenging note in his voice and thought, once again, _unnecessarily provocative._ “Besides me?” he added, making a deliberate effort to tone it down.

Thrawn inclined his head. He didn’t glance up when Ezra let out an exasperated noise.

“Just nodding your head is _definitely_ not enough of an answer right now,” Ezra complained. 

“I have met a Jedi,” Thrawn said blandly.

“Oh, come on.” Ezra couldn’t tell if Thrawn was baiting him just for kicks or trying to teach him a lesson in patience or if he was just naturally this aggravating. He ran his hands over his face, trying to at least _sound_ civil in case he was being tested. “ _Who_ did you meet?” he said. “And when?”

Thrawn abandoned the woven mat for a moment, placing his palms flat on the grass behind him and pulling himself a few feet away from Ezra, closer to a pile of cut fronds. “Are you interested in the training opportunity?” he asked, smoothing out the folds in the mat before going back to work.

“I’m interested in who you met and when,” Ezra said, crossing his arms. 

Again, Thrawn gave that little shrug. “I met Emperor Palpatine,” he said. “He is a Force-user. I met Darth Vader, also a Force-user, and worked with him for some time.”

“Those are Sith,” said Ezra, losing patience all at once and simultaneously thinking, _Kriff, I should have known._ “Sith are an _entirely_ different religion, dude — that’s like comparing the Yacombe with the Zealtos of Pusan. _Sith_ are not Jedi.”

“The implication being that only followers of certain religions can read minds, and that this ability is not inherent to anyone who can use the Force?” Thrawn queried. 

“I don’t know, dude,” said Ezra, throwing a hand up in the air. “Maybe? You know, there’s a Dark Side of the Force and a Light Side, and Jedi aren’t supposed to use the Dark Side. Maybe mind-reading is a Dark Side technique — if it’s even really a technique,” he added quickly.

For a long moment, Thrawn didn’t respond. He seemed to be mulling over the new information. 

“Explain the Light Side and Dark Side,” he said eventually. 

“Explain the Dark Side, _please_ ,” Ezra muttered.

Thrawn did not add ‘ _please_.’ With a sigh, Ezra leaned back and tried to gather his thoughts. The sun beat down on him, baking its way right through his jacket and leaving him somewhere on the border between ‘comfortably warm’ and ‘too hot.’

“So,” he said, “the Force is like the life-giving energy in all things, right?”

He wasn’t sure if this information was new to Thrawn or not, and Thrawn gave no indication either way.

“And life and death both feed into the Force,” Ezra said. “Using the Light Side sort of means that you’re using the Force to help people and foster peace, but using the Dark Side means you’re doing the opposite. You’re just feeding into all the bad stuff in the world, like death and war and …” He cast about for more examples. “I don’t know, like famine. Sometimes Dark Side users seem more powerful because they tap into negative emotions to really amp up their abilities — like, if you’re fighting and you really hate the person you’re fighting, and you _embrace_ that hatred instead of pushing through it, you’re tapping into the Dark Side.”

He hesitated, unsure if Thrawn was following him. 

“In that case,” said Thrawn evenly, “actions themselves are not inherently Dark or Light. It is the emotion one accesses which decides whether an act is Dark or Light.”

“Er, no,” said Ezra, eyebrows furrowing. “I don’t think so. Some things are just _bad_ , you know. You _do_ know some things are bad, right? Like how Vader’s always Force-choking people — if you ever use the Force to choke someone, that’s pretty much _automatically_ Dark Side stuff, right off the bat. Or like torture, that’s just a blatant, 100% bad thing, no exceptions.”

“Or like killing,” said Thrawn, his eyes burning into Ezra’s. Ezra’s mouth suddenly ran dry.

“There are times when you have to kill,” he said, looking away. Trying not to think of all the people ( _enemy soldiers,_ he told himself, but the thought rang hollow in his head) aboard the _Chimaera_. 

“Few societies acknowledge any crime more morally repugnant than murder,” said Thrawn. The tone of his voice indicated no particular emotion. His eyes were back on the mat. 

“Yeah, but most make exceptions for times of war, though,” said Ezra, striving to keep his voice light, like this was just a philosophical discussion. Like it meant nothing to either of them.

“Most,” Thrawn agreed. 

For a long moment, Thrawn worked in silence. Ezra leaned over and sifted through a pile of discarded cords, pulling a half-braided rope into his lap. He fiddled with it for a while, trying to get rid of the dark thoughts swarming his head.

“I have been Force-choked by a Jedi,” said Thrawn eventually — and despite the still-heavy subject matter, Ezra felt his shoulders relax a little when he realized Thrawn was letting the issue go. 

“Darth Vader isn’t a Jedi,” he said. “You can tell by the ‘Darth.’”

“I have also been Force-choked by Darth Vader,” Thrawn acknowledged, inclining his head. “But this was many years ago, a little before the Clone Wars. He was a Jedi; not a Sith.”

Ezra didn’t know what to say. He braided a few more inches of the rope; he could see a sharp decline in quality where Thrawn’s braids ended and his own began, and he spent a few seconds trying to tighten his section up. Across from him, Thrawn exhaled audibly and sat back, leaning on his palms, mimicking Ezra’s posture from earlier. He glared up at the sun, eyes narrowing in a muted flinch before he looked away.

“Perhaps it is morally wrong to read or influence another person’s mind,” Thrawn ceded, “but strategically, both abilities are valuable. You have used the Force to influence other people, yes?”

“Yes,” said Ezra begrudgingly.

“I find this more questionable than simply observing another person’s thoughts,” said Thrawn. “Don’t you?”

Ezra shook his head, refusing to answer. 

“In one instance, you merely invade a person’s privacy,” said Thrawn, “but if killing becomes an acceptable act during war, surely the invasion of privacy becomes acceptable as well. In the other instance, you go so far as to deliberately twist a person’s thoughts, forcing them to act against their will — in many cases and on most worlds, a criminal act of a degree only slightly more acceptable than murder. Consider the possibilities — I find influence far more dangerous than simple surveillance.”

Ezra’s mouth twisted. He jerked his shoulders up and down in a shrug. “Fine,” he said. “So both are bad, then — or both are neutral, or whatever it is you’re trying to say. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Thrawn’s head tilted to the side. “Why not?”

Exasperated, Ezra threw the half-braided rope to the ground. “Because it’s not like I can read people’s minds anyway,” he said. “This is all just theoretical — it’s pointless.”

“So you do not wish to continue training,” said Thrawn flatly.

“Training with _who_?” Ezra shot back. He raised his hands, gesturing at the forest around him. “If you’ve got a secret Jedi Master hanging out in a mountain fortress somewhere around here, _please_ feel free to let me know. I would literally _chop off my own legs_ if it meant I could talk to someone other than you for once.”

Thrawn was almost entirely expressionless, but Ezra could tell he was biting the inside of his cheek. After a month and a half of coexisting with Thrawn — and _only_ Thrawn, since there was no one else on this hellscape of a planet — this was the single, solitary sign of agitation Ezra had been able to identify, and it was so subtle he’d just noticed it recently.

“If you are able to influence minds,” said Thrawn, “it stands to reason you are also able to read them, _if_ you concentrate on the task at hand.” He said this with a pointed glance first at the abandoned woven mat and then at the abandoned rope. “I believe you only need practice.”

Ezra snorted, once again indicating the empty forest.

“You may practice on me,” said Thrawn tonelessly, looking down at the mat in his hands.

Ezra let his hand drop. The half-amused, half-sarcastic expression dissolved from his face, leaving him looking lost.

“You?” he said.

Thrawn shrugged. He finished Ezra’s abandoned mat, tying off the ends with tight, efficient knots. The pendant around his neck flashed in the sunlight, turning a pale silvery-blue. “If you find me an unsuitable subject, you can always practice on the wildlife,” Thrawn said dryly. 

Ezra wrinkled his nose, scarcely noticing the joke. “You wouldn’t let me read your mind,” he decided.

Thrawn huffed out a barely-audible breath. “Well, if you say so...”

“ _Why_ would you let me read your mind?” Ezra demanded, changing tack. “Don’t you have, like, all sorts of Imperial secrets and battle plans you can’t let me see? You won’t even tell me what _species_ you are.”

“Perhaps you can figure it out by reading my mind,” said Thrawn. He stood, bundling the woven canopy in his arms, and took a few steps toward the array of bare-bones buildings they’d spent the previous two days constructing. It felt like unending work to Ezra, and all of it seemed unnecessary when their winter shelter was still standing and in perfect working condition. Still, he hauled himself to his feet and followed Thrawn, helping him hang the canopy with minimal complaints.

He held the mats in place while Thrawn tied them down, both of them working in silence for a moment. But the whole conundrum of mind-reading wouldn’t stop eating at Ezra; his eyebrows furrowed as he thought it over. 

In a way, he figured Thrawn was right — if Jedi could influence people (and he knew they could, because he’d done it himself plenty of times), it stood to reason they could ‘read’ minds as well, to a certain extent. Whether or not it counted as a Dark Side activity would require further consideration, but it was true what Thrawn said: being able to read minds would be a fantastic strategic boon.

He held the mat in place while Thrawn leaned over him to tie it to one of the outside posts. With Thrawn leaning in like that, there was no way he could see Ezra’s face — the perfect moment for Ezra to finally ask, “Why would you help me, though?”

Thrawn wound the rope around the post, then drew back with a line between his eyebrows, examining Ezra’s loose braids. He picked them apart and re-did them, then leaned in again, maybe hiding his face deliberately just like Ezra was.

“You act as if we’re enemies,” he said lightly. “But we’ve been allies for forty-six days. I see no reason why that shouldn’t continue.”

Ezra frowned, pulling back as Thrawn finished the knots. The canopy clung tightly to the walls, breathable but waterproof — the perfect walls for a warm-weather shelter. 

“What about when we leave here?” Ezra asked. Thrawn glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

“When we leave here,” Thrawn said, “do you believe we’ll return to opposing sides of the war?”

“Well, I’m definitely not joining the Empire,” Ezra said. “You telling me you wanna join the Rebels?”

It was possible Thrawn smiled faintly at that, but he turned away before Ezra could be sure, retrieving the other woven mat from its spot near the river. 

“Those aren’t the only options,” he said simply. “And if you don’t trust my motivations, consider this.” He turned in a circle, glancing around the clearing where they’d made their home, the canopy bundled under his right arm and his left arm held out in a sweeping gesture. Then he turned back to Ezra, his face unreadable.

“Other than general maintenance and basic survival tasks, I have nothing better to do,” he said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reading Thrawn's mind proves more difficult than Ezra anticipated.

The days were long — about ten hours longer than the days on Lothal — and dusk settled over the planet at around 2200 according to the thirty-three-hour clock Ezra and Thrawn had devised. Ezra preferred to nap halfway through, during the four hours when the sun was highest, but he was fairly sure Thrawn stayed awake the entire time the sun was up.

Maybe even longer, for all he knew.

They sat across each other on opposite sides of a low fire, Ezra with his jacket pulled tight against the chill. Thrawn stared up at the stars, hands resting on his knees and eyes wide, as if he were scanning the sky for signs of an approaching ship. It was something he did every night, and Ezra could never be sure what exactly Thrawn expected to find; it was possible — maybe even likely — that Thrawn just liked picking out constellations.

Of course, out here he’d have to make up his own. Neither of them had found a single familiar pattern in the stars so far. 

Across from him, Thrawn stood and disappeared into the new shelter. He returned moments later, pulling a long-sleeved and heavily-mended athletic shirt over his head. Ezra turned his gaze away, staring down at the loose dirt at his feet, trying not to remember the days Thrawn had spent scavenging the wreck of the _Chimaera_ for whatever damaged supplies he could find — extra clothes like that fleece-lined training shirt, food stock, useful tools. He’d abandoned the search after a few days.

Or at least, Ezra _thought_ he had. There were those four hours each day when Ezra slept and he couldn’t account for Thrawn’s whereabouts; sometimes he suspected Thrawn returned to the wreck. Not looking for survivors — not anymore — but perhaps burying the bodies. Some days when Ezra woke up, he found Thrawn resting near the river with sweat dried onto his face, washing dirt from his hands. 

It didn’t bear thinking about, really. In the early days he’d staved off guilt over the _Chimaera_ by reminding himself what Thrawn had done to Lothal. Eventually, that had stopped working, and now he was too exhausted to feel guilty about the wreck or angry about his home planet; the whole thing just left him feeling scooped-out, hollow, lonelier than he’d been in years. 

Not seeming to notice Ezra’s plummeting mood, Thrawn took a seat across from him, pulled the hem of his shirt straight, and said, “Let’s begin.”

Ezra angled his head up, eyes narrowed as he gazed at Thrawn through the fire. “What?”

Thrawn gestured at his own head. “Attempt to read my mind.”

“Now?” Ezra said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m like, two seconds away from falling asleep.”

“Then this is a good time to practice,” said Thrawn reasonably. “If you begin this journey when you are both physically and mentally exhausted, you will find mind-reading to be effortless in any low- to mid-stakes situation. A battle, for instance.”

Ezra let his head hang, shoulders drooping. He couldn’t think of a particularly good argument; he was more focused on the fact that Thrawn thought a _battle_ qualified as low- to mid-stakes.

“Fine,” he said. “What do I do?”

“Read my mind,” said Thrawn, with a tone that seemed to say, _Obviously_.

“I _know_ that,” said Ezra, his patience straining, “but how?”

“I defer to your expertise in this area,” said Thrawn with a respectful inclination of the head. Of course, Ezra reflected, it wasn’t like Thrawn _would_ know. He wasn’t the least bit Force-sensitive. 

Sighing, Ezra sat up a little, straightening his spine and relaxing his shoulders. He called the Force to him, feeling it in the crackling wood and the oxygen feeding into the fire, the new grass shooting up between his feet. Gradually — vaguely, like a fuzzy outline or an image in a warped mirror — he felt a channel form between himself and Thrawn and he followed it tentatively, his grip on it loose and unreliable. It was like climbing up an unraveling rope.

And as the rope unraveled, the threads seemed to encircle him, feeding him information he hadn’t had before. There was something alien in the air between them: orderly rows of impenetrable ciphers scrolling through Ezra’s mind, muted senses and emotions making themselves known, so faint he could barely feel them and definitely couldn’t identify them. But they were _there_ — he couldn’t read them, but they were 100%, undeniably there.

“I see it,” he said, not opening his eyes. Thrawn didn’t respond, but in his mind — if this nebulous sensation Ezra was feeling could really be called a _mind_ — there was a flicker of response, something not quite emotion and not quite thought. It was more like a reflex, like someone’s knee jerking when struck in just the right place — only more muted, more subtle.

Was that what it felt like to actually _see_ it when someone else heard him talk? Was he looking at the automatic reaction of Thrawn’s mind to any sort of auditory stimulus?

Before he could figure it out, the ciphered thoughts twisted and bulged, pressing up physically against Ezra’s own mind. He recoiled from it all, unsure what was going on.

“Commander Bridger?” Thrawn said aloud.

Ezra cracked open one eye. Thrawn was still sitting across the fire, composed and unperturbed. Like usual, he wasn’t fidgeting at all. “Yeah?” Ezra said.

“I am attempting to communicate with you mentally,” Thrawn said. “Do you understand?”

“Oh, hell,” Ezra muttered, feeling the ciphers flicker and change again, each line reaching out in an almost tangible sense to brush against Ezra’s thoughts. “ _That’s_ what you call communication? It’s completely unreadable.”

The orderly layout of Thrawn’s mind seemed to wrinkle.

“Oh, wait,” Ezra breathed, sitting up straighter. “I think I just figured out how to tell when you’re pissed.”

“Fascinating,” said Thrawn flatly. “Maintain the connection. If you can, describe what you see.”

It took Ezra a few minutes before he felt confident in his ability to do both at the same time. His mouth twisted as he mulled it over.

“I can feel you warming your hands against the fire,” he said. “Like I can feel the warmth on my _own_ hands, like my hands are near the fire, only…” He held his hands up, showing Thrawn how far they were from the flames. “And I can tell they’re not just warm, they’re sore from building the shelter today and yesterday. Your thumb is … scraped up, maybe bleeding a little.”

“Where?” asked Thrawn. Ezra furrowed his eyebrows, throwing all his concentration down that particular unspooled thread.

“On the pad of the thumb,” he said, half-guessing at first but growing more confident in his answer by the time he got all the words out. “Your left hand,” he added decisively.

“And how was it injured?” Thrawn asked, barely waiting until Ezra had finished speaking. Ezra frowned, chasing the thread as it twisted away from him. It seemed to evaporate every time he grabbed onto it; there were segments he could catch, but each one was blocked off from him, hidden behind that indecipherable shield all of Thrawn’s thoughts seemed to have.

“I can’t tell,” he said finally. He opened his eyes, letting the connection slide. Across the fire, Thrawn glanced at him once, almost dismissively, and then looked down at his left hand. He didn’t hold it up for Ezra to see, and after a moment, Ezra realized he didn’t need Thrawn to confirm the scrape — he knew it was there even without seeing it. Somehow, as confusing and distant as Thrawn’s mind had been, Ezra was absolutely certain he was right about the injured thumb, the sore hands, the heat of the fire on Thrawn’s palms.

“Are you still connected to my mind?” Thrawn asked, meeting Ezra’s eyes.

Quickly, Ezra regained his hold on the connection and nodded.

“Describe the structure of it, if you will,” Thrawn said. 

“What, the cut?” said Ezra, blinking.

“The structure of my mind.”

Ezra couldn’t think of anything harder to describe than the bewildering architecture of Thrawn’s mind. He bit his lip and searched for the right words, reaching out across the channel of the Force between them as if that might help. In a way, doing this felt almost the same as cheating on an exam at school; in another way, it felt completely and utterly useless, like opening your eyes inside a muddy river and trying to describe fish that you assumed were there but couldn’t actually see.

“I guess…” he said hesitantly. “I guess I’d say it’s — it’s really methodical, really clear. Like a map of a well-planned city. But at the same time it’s completely impossible to read. It’s like the error screen on a datapad, with numbers and letters you don’t know scrolling by so fast you don’t have time to even _try_ to figure them out.”

Through their link came a faint sense of approval. Ezra’s eyes shot open in surprise, partially at the approval itself and partially at the fact that he could identify it.

“What else?” said Thrawn, his tone neutral, his face expressionless.

“What _else?_ ” Ezra said, baffled. Maybe he hadn’t felt approval after all. It was impossible to tell from looking at Thrawn. “That wasn’t good enough?”

“You described the basic structure of my thoughts,” said Thrawn.

Was that supposed to be an apology or a rebuke? Ezra could feel the Force connection slipping away as he grew more agitated. “Isn’t that what you _told_ me to do?” he asked.

“There is more to a person’s mind than thoughts alone,” Thrawn said. He spoke slowly, as if he didn’t trust Ezra to understand — or as if he was still sussing it out himself. “There are memories and the subject’s emotional state to consider. There are physical sensations, as well, which you picked up on quickly.”

“Oh, great,” Ezra said. “I can tell if the enemy has warm hands.”

Even with the connection dwindling, he could feel a sense of reproach emanating from Thrawn. It was the strongest emotion he’d sensed since they started.

“Physical sensations can be imminently valuable,” Thrawn said. “Imagine if you were tracking a subject through the levels of Coruscant — are you familiar with Coruscant?”

Ezra gave a quick, irritated nod. _Everyone_ was familiar with Coruscant.

“Seeing what your subject sees might give you an exact location, and is guaranteed to give an approximate one. Hearing what your subject hears will help narrow the options when more than one location is possible. Feeling what your subject feels will give you valuable information regarding exhaustion level, injuries, and other weaknesses you can exploit. For example—”

He held up his left hand, allowing Ezra to see the faint, red scrape on his thumb and the blisters on his palm. “Even a minor scrape implies susceptibility to any manner of toxins, particularly those which can be absorbed to an effective degree through broken skin. Such toxins include—”

“I get it, I get it,” Ezra said, waving his hands to stop Thrawn before he went on. “Skip the lecture, okay? What do you think we’re gonna do — you wanna go scavenging in the woods for plants to turn into poison darts? Whatever toxins you knew about on Coruscant aren’t even here.”

Silently, Thrawn let his hand fall. He glanced off into the woods for a long moment, not speaking, and Ezra couldn’t get a good grasp on his thoughts through the Force.

“It is possible,” said Thrawn eventually, quieter than before, “that you find my thoughts difficult to read because I am not thinking in Basic. Your description of an unintelligible computer interface more or less tallies with descriptions I’ve heard before from other Jedi. Can you sense anything else? Emotions, physical sensations?”

Ezra narrowed his eyes. He could sense ghost images lurking — almost entirely invisible — behind the wall of ciphers that was Thrawn’s mind; there was something unfolding there, like a scraggly, half-dead flower still coming into bloom. He only got a glimpse of it for a second, long enough to tentatively identify it as the image of a plant, and then it was gone and the ciphers were, too.

For a brief moment, he considered calling it off for the night; using the Force like this was exhausting, and on top of an already exhausting day, he was almost unbearably tired. But without really thinking about it, he dismissed this option and worked to resume the connection. It had been too long since he trained; there was part of him that hungered for it, that needed to connect with the Force and with other people, that needed to improve his skills the same way he needed food and water to live.

He let his mind cool down and his thoughts drift away, focusing fully on what he could read off of Thrawn. Gradually, the crackle of the fire faded away and his senses seemed to dull, leaving him with the increasingly strong threads of Thrawn’s mind.

Ezra inhaled — a long, slow, meditative breath — and held it for a moment before letting it out.

“Your hair is getting longer than you like it,” he said eventually, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. "You've never had it longer than four inches before, and now it's almost five, and you think it's impractical, so you're thinking about how you plan to cut it soon. And it’s uncomfortable because it’s a little damp right now, too; I can feel that, but I don’t know why it’s not dry.”

“Concentrate,” Thrawn said.

“I _am_ concentrating,” Ezra muttered with a frown, but there was no ire in his voice. He was too deeply absorbed in his task to really pick a fight. “I think …” he said, then broke off, biting his lip. “I think maybe you don’t like that it’s getting _wavy_ now? It’s not usually wavy like that — it’s usually straight, or maybe you used to have some sort of gel or something that straightened it out — but either way, I think you used water from … the river…? to wet it down, to make it more like it used to be.”

Thrawn, predictably, had some objections to that.

“I am _unsatisfied_ with my hair because it is long enough to obscure my sight,” he said steadily, “yet too short to be tied back. Not out of vanity.”

Ezra hesitated, testing this statement against the strange flickers of Thrawn’s mind, looking for any indicator that this was true. “So you got it damp so you could keep it out of your eyes,” he said.

Across the fire, Thrawn inclined his head in confirmation. Ezra’s eyes weren’t open, but he could almost see Thrawn nodding nonetheless; he could sort of _feel_ it, like a phantom pain located around his own jaw and neck. Like he was nodding himself.

“What else?” Thrawn asked.

Ezra breathed easier, glad to move on to simpler tasks. “You’re _really_ cold,” he said, “because your hair is wet and your pullover isn’t thick enough, so your arms and chest are freezing. You’re cold pretty much everywhere except your legs — those are uncomfortably hot, almost like they’re sunburnt. They’re too close to the fire. And right between here—” Ezra touched a spot in the center of his collar bone. “—you’re _warm_ , I don’t know why. But you’re still shivering just a little bit, but you … don’t want … to get a jacket—?”

“Yes,” Thrawn said, apparently uninterested in this line of thought. “Moving on.”

Mentally, Ezra switched tracks, searching through the neat and orderly web of Thrawn’s thoughts to find the minuscule nodes of information he could actually understand.

“Um, well,” he said, eyebrows knotted, “I can tell you’re tired.”

There was a brief pause. For a moment, Ezra didn’t think Thrawn was going to acknowledge him.

“Your evidence?” Thrawn prompted. Ezra almost opened his eyes, but remembered to keep them closed at the last second.

“Evidence?” he asked, squeezing his eyes closed so tightly it almost hurt.

“Yes,” said Thrawn. “We are approaching the end of a thirty-three-hour day. How can I be certain you’re not making an educated guess?”

Ezra breathed in a sudden (justified) surge of irritation and breathed it out in a long sigh, forcing himself to concentrate on the signals from Thrawn’s mind instead of the much stronger signals from his own. 

“Okay,” he muttered. “Let’s see …”

Thrawn waited, giving nothing away.

“Well, your eyes are itchy,” Ezra said, frowning. “Like, _really_ dry, and that weird little red line underneath them — whatever that is — feels weird, like sort of bruised and sore. Like you got punched.” He took a deep breath, letting the fresh scent of the woods enter his lungs; the sensations came a little easier now. “And your chest and shoulder are aching,” he said. “In a superficial way, not like you sprained something; like maybe there are old injuries or old scars that get touchy at the end of the day.”

“Which shoulder is that?” Thrawn asked before Ezra could go on. Blindly, Ezra reached out and touched his own right shoulder.

“Your right one,” he said. 

“You have an excellent sense for physical sensations,” Thrawn noted. His tone was impossible to read. “Move away from those for a moment. What else do you see?”

Ezra stretched out to the Force with everything he had. Seconds ticked by, filled with nothing but silence. He held his breath for a long time, holding out hope that this would spark something, but all he felt were the things he’d already described: the scraped hands, the night chill cutting through Thrawn’s training shirt, the peculiar bruised feeling underneath his eyes.

“Nothing,” Ezra said finally, sitting back with a sigh.

“Emotionally,” Thrawn prompted, like Ezra might have forgotten what he was looking for. Ezra opened his eyes and shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said again. Across the fire, Thrawn was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, his unblinking eyes scanning Ezra’s face. Trying to figure out if Ezra really couldn’t sense anything or if he’d just given up, Ezra guessed.

“You show some potential,” Thrawn said finally, sitting back. 

Ezra let out a weary sound somewhere between a scoff and a sigh. Thrawn didn’t seem to hear him. He stood up, brushing the wrinkles out of his shirt and carefully inserting more dry logs into the fire.

“We’ll make further attempts tomorrow,” Thrawn said.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra finds a holoprojector in Thrawn's things.

He didn’t miss the cold temperatures, Ezra decided, but he definitely missed the longer nights that used to rule this planet in winter. The trees were still mostly bare, some of them just beginning to bud, but the sun was rising earlier and earlier each day. 

And with the sun, thought Ezra darkly from his makeshift mattress, came those kriffing birds. He cracked an eye open, glaring through the little window Thrawn had fashioned on the east side of the shelter. The sunlight was thin, but the birds were screaming at the top of their little lungs, like they had a personal vendetta against the people who’d crash-landed on their planet and were determined neither Ezra nor Thrawn should get any sleep.

Ezra sat up slowly, stretching out with a groan. Somehow, every muscle in his body felt sore — like he’d just had the fight of his life, or like he’d ran across half the planet or sifted through the wreckage of the _Chimaera_ on his own. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so harshly affected by Force training.

Maybe he wasn’t suited for this, he reflected.

Or maybe, he thought a little more darkly, _Thrawn_ wasn’t suited to be a test subject. That seemed easier to believe, really. Starting out mind-reading with Thrawn was like coming out of a year-long coma and going straight into the All-Lothal Triathlon the very next day.

By the time he stumbled out of his shelter, the sunlight was coming through the trees more strongly, warming up the cold, wet grass beneath his feet. Thrawn was already up, standing waist-deep in the river to check the traps he’d set the evening prior. He glanced up when Ezra came out, making brief eye contact before resuming his task.

“Good morning to you, too,” Ezra muttered. He kicked at the defunct fire pit, now filled with cold ashes from the night before, and glanced around for the little duraplast container they usually kept nearby. 

They’d discovered shortly after the purrgils abandoned the ship that there was practically no dry wood anywhere on the planet. Everything was damp, covered in thin layers of snow and ice. It rained daily in the winter, sometimes snowing as well, and at first it seemed like a fire would be next to impossible.

Thrawn had been the one to discover a flammable sap in the trees. It was a special form of bioprecipitation, he said — a type of bacterial infection in the trees that created ice nucleation-active proteins, making the water in the trees freeze even at mild temperatures. The water froze; the bark of the tree split open, and out came a viscous, bluish sap that burst into flames when heated. 

They’d collected it in a broken duraplast droid cap scavenged from the _Chimaera_ , but now that container was nowhere to be seen. Ezra spun in a circle, glancing this way and that across the clearing, and couldn’t catch sight of it anywhere. 

He wasn’t incapable of starting a fire without the sap — especially not now, with a makeshift shed keeping their firewood safe from the rain — but where the hell could the container have gone? 

Frowning, he glanced back at Thrawn. Still in the river, studiously avoiding Ezra’s eyes.

“Oh, you bastard,” Ezra said, just loud enough for Thrawn to hear. He sat down hard on the ground, crossing his arms over his chest. Some kind of dumbass test, first thing in the morning. And the fire was out, so he couldn’t even have breakfast first.

Ezra gave himself a few moments to sit there, just scowling and wallowing in his outrage. Then, gradually, he let it go. 

_Reach out to the Force,_ he heard Kanan saying. _Open yourself up to the world around you._

_To other people._

Ezra let out his breath in a slow sigh. He didn’t see the pebbles lifting out of the dirt around him, hovering just a few centimeters off the ground. His eyes were closed, his concentration focused solely on the thin, unspooling thread connecting him to Thrawn.

He felt the subtle current of the river pushing against his legs, the water like ice against his skin and going up over his head as he sunk beneath the surface, his hands going numb from the cold. The ropes connected to each underwater trap felt foreign, his fingers stiff, making it difficult to pull them up. 

Even stronger than those sensations, though — and more surprising — was _Thrawn’s_ awareness of _Ezra_. He was checking the traps on autopilot, tossing the full ones onto the banks of the river without really thinking about it. He gasped for air each time he resurfaced, but with military efficiency rather than panic, taking in as much oxygen as he could as he reset the empty traps and let them sink back down to the silty bottom. All his senses were trained on the world around him, focused especially on Ezra, taking in things Ezra himself had never noticed about both their surroundings and themselves.

The river had been shaped by sentient beings eons ago, Ezra realized. He didn’t know how Thrawn knew this, but he did. There had once been a man-made dam not far from where he stood, the effects of years of tree-clearing still evident on the flora growing there. Beyond that, far from the clearing where they’d made their shelter — scarcely visible through the trees — was a patch of overgrown field and new-growth forest where crops had once been grown hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. 

Through Thrawn’s eyes, Ezra could see his own heat signature flaring up over his sorest muscles — his abs, his triceps, his quads. Ezra focused deeper, pouring himself into the connection, clawing his way into Thrawn’s observations. He could feel a warm, pulsing glow between his clavicles, a sense of calmness and serenity emanating out from that one, small point.

And suddenly he had it. It was clear as day: he looked down and saw his hands (blue-skinned now, and larger than Ezra’s hands normally were) reaching down to lift the duraplast container off the ground. He walked it away from the fire pit, moving carefully but quickly, gracefully — taking the container into the small shelter off to the right where Thrawn had made his home.

Exhaling through his nose, Ezra severed the connection and opened his eyes. His hands were a light, sun-kissed brown again; he felt inexplicably shorter. In the river, Thrawn glanced up again, catching Ezra’s eye with a knowing expression on his face.

Ezra crossed the clearing to Thrawn’s shelter, pulling the thatched door open and glancing inside. Instead of a makeshift cot, Thrawn slept on a woven mat placed directly on the hard-packed ground, with a scratchy Imperial-issue blanket folded into a square at one end. His quarters were orderly — slightly smaller than Ezra’s but seeming somehow more spacious. His spare clothes were folded neatly in a handmade box in the corner; crude shelves on the walls held what few tools they’d managed to make out of scavenged materials and harvested wood.

Ezra spotted the duraplast container right away, but he took his time getting to it, making sure to inspect every inch of Thrawn’s quarters before he fetched it. It was Thrawn’s own fault; he was the one who’d decided to test Ezra before breakfast, so it was only fair if Ezra got to snoop around a little in return.

Broken comlinks and datapads — along with assorted parts scavenged from smashed droids — filled a second box next to Thrawn’s clothes, and Ezra sifted through these for a moment, trying to determine if there was any real purpose to hoarding them or if they just represented some sort of faint hope that someday — somehow — they could find a way off this planet.

Digging through the box, his fingers struck something small and round — something immediately familiar to Ezra. He grabbed it and pulled it out from the mess, holding it up to the light without surprise. A holoprojector; he’d known as soon as he touched it. It was dull and scratched and cheap — the kind that people pre-loaded with books and other files before going on long flights or camping trips — but it was still functional.

Ezra slipped it into his pocket and lugged the duraplast container of sap out of the corner. Outside, he dipped a slim log in the container, coating it thinly in the blue liquid and placing it at the bottom of a firewood stack. 

Thrawn came over shortly after the flames shot up, trailing drops of cold water as he waded out of the river and onto the grass. He stood too close to the fire for Ezra’s comfort, his eyes closed and his arms crossed, letting the heat dry out the thin military-issue shorts he wore when dealing with the river. 

“Very good,” he said. That was the only acknowledgement Ezra got about passing Thrawn’s test. They crowded around the fire, neither of them speaking; Ezra’s thoughts were centered on the stolen holoprojector, his face carefully blank and his palms sweating. He was certain Thrawn would call him out on it at any moment.

But when Thrawn’s clothes were more or less dry, he retreated to his quarters without another word, leaving Ezra to cook and eat breakfast alone. Ezra studied the fish traps, eventually selecting an eel-like creature that was unappetizing in appearance, but tasty enough and easy to prepare. He stripped off the outer layer of skin with a short vibroblade and plucked out the internal organs, almost disgusted with how easy this was after forty-six — no, forty-seven — days on this planet. In practically no time at all he had it propped up on a skewer stand and roasting over the fire.

He pulled the holoprojector out while the eel roasted, turning it over in his hands. When he found the power button, he pressed it without pausing to think about what he was doing. A series of images popped up — thumbnails, really, too small for Ezra to make out. No books, he noted sadly, and no films, either. Just photos.

Well, photos could make for decent entertainment, he supposed. Especially when you were stranded on a deserted planet with nothing better to do. He selected the first photo and it expanded immediately, showing a nondescript human family — two elderly adults, three young adults, no children — all smiling into the camera. Ezra scrolled through to the next photo, noticing familiar faces in a new location, different clothes. 

On the third photo, his throat tightened. The elderly man and one of the young women from the first photo were embracing, both of them nearly swallowed up by the crowd at a dingy shuttle port. The man’s face was creased; he looked close to crying.

The woman — his daughter, Ezra supposed — was wearing the uniform of an Imperial officer, though Ezra couldn’t remember which rank her insignia represented. She was crying, too.

He shut the projector off for a moment, feeling sick. But what had he expected? The projector could only come from one place — the _Chimaera_ — and there hadn’t been any civilians onboard when it crashed. When the wave of nausea faded, he turned the projector back on again, steeling himself to look through the rest of the photos. They were arranged chronologically, showing the young woman in uniform with her colleagues, in civilian clothes with her friends, planet-side and smiling, aboard the _Chimaera_ and smiling, still. Relaxed, comfortable with the people around her, leaning into her fellow officers the same way she leaned into her family in the first photo stored on the projector. 

There she was making silly faces at the camera. There were her colleagues, engaged in card games. Pushing and shoving with her friends, then snapping back to straight-faced seriousness in the next photo, all of them posing with perfect Imperial posture and trying not to laugh.

He turned the projector off again, this time folding his arms over his knees and resting his head there. He closed his eyes and tried not to replay all those images in his mind. 

He didn’t notice his breakfast burning until Thrawn returned from his shelter and removed the blackened piece of meat from the fire without a word. Ezra kept his face buried in his arms, ignoring the sound of Thrawn’s footsteps, of the traps opening and closing, of a fish being methodically and thoroughly prepared. Only when two good-sized fish were ready to cook — and not just skewered, but thrown into a dinged-up skillet they’d crafted from melted durasteel — did Thrawn take a seat at Ezra’s side. 

“Your skills have improved markedly since last night,” Thrawn commented.

“Mm,” Ezra said, not in the mood. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Thrawn picked up the holoprojector and silently turned it over in his hands. His thumb hovered over the power button, but he didn’t turn it on.

Sighing, Ezra rubbed his eyes and forced himself to sit up. “Who was she?” he asked, dreading the answer.

Thrawn didn’t say anything for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “Perhaps you can find her name in my mind?”

“Thrawn,” Ezra groaned, kneading his temples, “come on.”

“At least make an attempt,” Thrawn said, not harshly. Unsettled, Ezra gave in, pouring himself fluidly into the connection once again. The name jumped out at him instantly, comprised of the only Aurebesh letters amongst the incomprehensible ciphers which made up the rest of Thrawn’s thoughts. It stood out so starkly that it had to be deliberate, like Thrawn had translated the name into Aurebesh for him, just to see if Ezra would be able to read it.

And with the name came an image — a clear memory of the woman from the holos in uniform and at her station, her mouth moving, her hands coming up in an enthusiastic gesture as she spoke. Faint words, barely audible, echoed around the image, but Ezra couldn’t quite make them out. He caught a sound that might have been breaking glass, a feeling like the earth trembling beneath him, a sensation of claustrophobia and smothering pain.

But no emotions came with these memories. No fear, no pain, no grief or sorrow. If there was anything there, it was too muted for Ezra to feel it.

“Kana Pyrondi,” Ezra said wearily, drawing back from Thrawn’s mind.

“Senior Lieutenant Kana Pyrondi,” Thrawn said a little stiffly. “Yes.”

Ezra rested his head on his arms again, this time turning so he could watch Thrawn at the same time. “You were … friends?” he guessed.

Thrawn gave him a strange look — arch and regretful at the same time. “Lieutenant Pyrondi was my weapons officer,” he said. “She was on the bridge when …” He gestured wordlessly, a sharp and impatient flick of the wrist.

“Oh,” said Ezra. Thrawn examined the projector a moment longer, the blunt edge of his thumbnail scraping over the power button.

“So far,” he said, “I have found only this functional holoprojector. The rest have been irreparably damaged.”

He stared into the fire for a moment, his eyes hard and unreadable, his hands clasped firmly around the projector. Ezra watched him, considered connecting with Thrawn’s mind, and recoiled from the idea with an almost horrified sense of distaste, of shame. He watched the fire, too, his eyes constantly drawn back to the projector. The images played through his mind nonstop.

Finally, reluctantly, he said, “I looked through the pictures.”

Thrawn nodded, unsurprised.

“I…” Ezra hesitated, unsure what he wanted to say. “I didn’t know any of their names.”

This time, Thrawn didn’t respond. He leaned forward with an almost inaudible sigh and knelt before the low fire, flipping the simmering fish in the pan. Ezra stared at the back of Thrawn’s head and forced himself to ask.

“Do you … uh, do you think you could tell me some of their names?” he said. “Or the ones you know, at least?”

“I know the names of everyone in those holos,” said Thrawn, his voice flat. “Those who were not Lieutenant Pyrondi’s immediate family were my officers, some from the _Chimaera_ and some from the _Thunder Wasp_.”

The fish sizzled, flesh hissing from the heat of the flames. 

“So do you think you could tell me who they are?” Ezra asked, sitting up a bit straighter.

“No,” said Thrawn firmly. His tone broached no argument; he got to his feet and slipped the projector into his pocket at the same time, keeping his eyes on the fire. This time, he didn’t invite Ezra to find the names in his mind, and Ezra couldn’t even fathom attempting it at the moment. It wasn’t just a matter of laziness or exhaustion — there was something inherent to him that balked at the idea of forcing an answer when Thrawn didn’t want to give it, even as the rest of him burned with curiosity; even if, in some way, he felt he _needed_ to know.

“Eat well,” said Thrawn eventually, turning away from the fire. “Come find me when you’re ready to train.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra breaks into Thrawn's memories for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For memories, I switch from past tense to present. I know it's super jarring but it's the best I could come up with to mark the change XD Italics don't work purely because of scenes later on where there are memories within memories. Sorry!

He’s walking over a thick layer of snow, a flat grid-like structure attached to the bottoms of his shoes to keep him from sinking into the banks. When Ezra concentrates, he gets a sense of thin, flexible wood beneath his fingers; a half-memory, half-sensation of bending saplings into the shapes he needs in order to walk on snow. He skims over the ground, walking quickly, sinking only about an inch into the banks as he makes his way to the woods.

He wears only his thinnest layer of clothing, leaving his heavier furs behind. He knows the walk there and back ( _there?_ Ezra wonders. _Where was there?_ ) will be long and arduous, especially with the fresh snow, and the furs would have become soaked with sweat as he worked if he wore them ( _doing what?_ Ezra wonders), leaving him freezing cold and with nothing to change into.

The wind kicks up flurries of snow from the ground, throwing them into his face, each one hitting the exposed skin on his hands and face like a cold kiss. He feels — he feels — he feels _something_ about it, some mutated off-shoot of either _happy_ or _sad_ or — wait, but that makes no sense. You can’t really be happy and sad at the same time, can you? It has to be one or the other ... unless he’s completely off-base. In which case maybe it’s just—

“Concentrate,” Thrawn called over his shoulder.

“Ughhhh,” Ezra said, snapping out of the connection with a more dramatic sigh than the situation strictly called for. “Come on, man. I was _this_ close.”

Thrawn kept working, rolling an empty, dented barrel into the clearing. His hair hung over his forehead, more unruly than it had been just days before. The sun was reaching its apex overhead, but it wasn’t nearly as hot out as it should have been — grey clouds hung low over the forest, threatening rain. 

“This close to what, exactly?” Thrawn asked, stopping the barrel when it was well away from the trees and setting it upright. A simple water purification system was affixed to the mouth of the barrel, waiting for rainwater to fill it up.

“To actually sensing an _emotion_ from you,” Ezra said, throwing his hands up. “For once.”

“Well, try again,” said Thrawn. He didn’t sound particularly interested in the training he’d so insisted on, Ezra noticed. 

Still, Ezra supposed he _had_ to be interested in some way, even if he was hiding it. Otherwise, he would have never suggested it to Ezra in the first place, and he certainly wouldn’t allow it continue day after day. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and concentrated, slipping quickly and almost easily into the headspace he needed in order to get into Thrawn’s brain.

This time the memory was different:

He sits cross-legged on a primitive, hand-made bed — an actual bed, not a woven mattress on the floor — with his back to the wall and an animal fur wrapped around his shoulders. A bowl of thick soup warms his hands, the scent of it simultaneously foreign to Ezra and intimately familiar. But he isn’t eating; his head is cocked, and he listens to hailstones pinging off the roof of his hut.

The memory shifted:

In his hands is a gritty, skin-searing bar of soap; his first attempt at making soap led to mild chemical burns on his fingers, but that was a long time ago, and the burns are almost healed now. He scrubs at the dirt caked on his hands, the mud dried on his forearms, white soap foaming up to cover blue skin.

It still stings a little; he can’t figure out how to make it any milder without negating its antiseptic qualities, no matter how much he experiments with it. A face swims before his eyes, a flash of incomprehensible features that just evade Ezra’s sight; _mother_ , he thinks, but somehow he can’t be sure if the face he saw comes from _his_ memory or from Thrawn’s, if the woman’s skin was blue or brown. The features are all too indistinct; they go by too fast.

He should have asked her more questions before she died, he thinks; she knew how to do this perfectly — a seamless blend of native fragrance and cleansing properties, without the risk of pain — and if he’d only asked, he wouldn’t have a need for all this trial-and-error. She’d complained about his curiosity sometimes, seriously but never too stridently; perhaps it had affected him somewhat as a child, led him to stifle those questions he deemed unnecessary so he wouldn’t be scolded for the ones that seemed essential at the time. 

He scrubs harder, digging the soap into a shallow cut on his wrist. He relishes the sting the same way he relishes the ache of his muscles after a long, hard day. He wishes—

Everything changed again, the memory splintering apart before Ezra’s eyes. For a moment he was disoriented, unable to make sense of the whirling sights and sounds coming at him from all sides. Then all of it assembled, every different thread of sensory input becoming clear like a puzzle fitting itself together.

Wildflowers invade the clearing, spilling out of the woods in pale shades of white and yellow. They dot the grass here and there, from deep in the trees all the way to the front door of the hut. He sits outside, the sun high and warm but the air cool enough to justify the furs he still wears, waiting for winter to truly end.

The yellow petals can be boiled to make a dye, he thinks. With enough different colors — and using the sun-dried animal skins as a canvas, he can make a painting. There are more wildflowers in the woods, he knows. Blue, purple — shades of orange and red and washed-out green. But he doesn’t move; he stares at the flowers.

When — Ezra’s mind stutters over the sudden barrage of foreign words popping into his mind — when _someone_ , not him, first went to — to a place called Copero ( _was that right?_ ), he’d called home about the flowers, describing them in the greatest detail he could, even bringing his camera outside with him so his little brother could see them, too. And damn anyone who sneered at him for it, he’d said. It was all well and good to cultivate a reputation, he said, but not at the cost of your own happiness. He was more than willing to out himself as a commoner by fawning over the flowers.

And now Ezra can’t even properly look at the flowers himself. His head is aching, his vision blurred and vague. He reaches up to wipe an irritant out of his eyes — if indeed there is an irritant, if this isn’t just the memory splintering again — and catches sight of the blue skin on his hand. Freezes. Remembers who he is.

The connection broke. Thrawn glanced up from where he was setting up a second barrel. They stared at each other for a moment, Ezra breathless and confused, Thrawn expressionless.

“Well?” Thrawn said eventually, brushing the dirt off his hands.

“There was nothing there,” Ezra said, too quietly for Thrawn to hear. Thrawn frowned at him, but didn’t come closer, preferring to examine the barrels for flaws instead. “There was nothing there,” Ezra said again, louder this time, organizing his thoughts. “I mean, in the memory, I was — _you_ were upset, I think. Maybe. But there weren’t any emotions. It was just…”

He gestured helplessly at his eyes, unable to put the strange sensation into words. For a moment there, connected to Thrawn’s mind like that, he’d been certain he was crying (or at the very least, his vision was blurry for _some_ reason), but he hadn’t felt a _thing_ emotionally. Everything had been viciously numb.

Thrawn dismissed Ezra for a moment, working silently on the rain collection system. He adjusted the plastic covering on the second barrel, then straightened up and approached Ezra.

“What did you learn?” he asked.

For a moment, Ezra just stared at him, unable to comprehend the question. He was still overwhelmed by that last memory — two conflicting timelines overlapping with each other, echoes of one memory layered over the next, the flowers and the nebulous voice of a boy he’d never met, speaking in a language Ezra simultaneously didn’t know and perfectly understood.

“What did you learn?” Thrawn asked again, more patiently than Ezra expected.

“Uh,” said Ezra, struggling to get his thoughts in order. He looked back over each memory, assembling them into some sort of picture. It was difficult, but gradually it all started to come together. He talked slowly, giving his thoughts time to catch up with his mouth.

“Well, you’re from a primitive planet,” he said. “Probably somewhere out in the Outer Rim, maybe even Wild Space, because you grew up without spaceships or technology or anything like that, and there’s no planets in the Core Worlds without technology. And…” He eyed Thrawn uncertainly, almost suspiciously. “...you haven’t actually been in the military all that long,” he said, “because you’re not much younger in those memories than you are now.”

He waited for Thrawn to confirm or deny this.

“Continue,” Thrawn said. 

Now both flustered and a little pissed off at the lack of answers, Ezra said, “Continue with what?”

“Extrapolate,” said Thrawn evenly. “Use the information you’ve gathered to assess the subject’s weaknesses and strengths.”

“Well, weaknesses are pretty easy,” Ezra shot off right away. “Wildflowers, for one.”

Thrawn gazed back at him without emotion, completely unperturbed by what Ezra had hoped might be a good, petty jab at a weak spot. Eventually, with no reaction from Thrawn, Ezra turned away, exasperated and jittery. He threw his hands up in the air, then crossed his arms tightly over his chest, shaking his head.

He’d been so completely immersed in Thrawn’s memories that for a long period, he hadn’t really been _himself_. It was beyond unnerving … but, he told himself, it had to be even more unnerving for Thrawn. Right? It was _his_ mind that was being invaded, his memories that Ezra was slipping into like they were a fresh set of clothes. You’d think that sort of invasion would ruffle his feathers at least a _little_ , but for all intents and purposes, there he stood — completely unruffled.

“Okay,” Ezra said in a sigh, turning back to Thrawn. “I’m over it.”

A line appeared between Thrawn’s eyebrows. “Over—?”

“Strengths: obviously, tons of survival skills,” Ezra interrupted. “The hut you lived in and all the stuff in it — well, most of the stuff — looked handmade, or like you’d cobbled it together from spare parts. There’s some chemical knowledge — you made your own soap, and I guess that means you have to know what stuff to mix together and what to avoid. Hunting and, uh, I guess sewing as well, because of the furs.” 

He furrowed his eyebrows, trying to remember everything he’d seen. “Craftsmanship and winter survival,” he said finally. “Because of the snowshoes. I can’t think of anything else.”

“Weaknesses,” Thrawn prompted. 

Ezra pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well … you didn’t have droids or datapads or anything like that,” he said, “and there weren’t any speeders or skimmers or _any_ vehicles, actually, parked outside. So obviously, technology would be an issue, like I said before. If you grew up on a primitive planet, then you’d only be introduced to modern tech when you joined the Navy, and that wasn’t until recently, like maybe ten years ago — so any enemy could exploit that lack of technical literacy … if they knew about it, I mean.”

Thrawn surveyed him for a moment, his face giving nothing away. 

“Reasonable assessments,” he said finally. Somehow, despite the praise — could that _really_ be called praise, though? — Ezra got the impression Thrawn didn’t really approve.

“What’s with the whole Copero thing?” he asked, jumping to the defensive without thinking about it, before Thrawn could tell him why he was wrong. “Is that a planet or a star system — or an organization, or what?”

Thrawn glanced over at the water barrels, seemingly ignoring Ezra. “Let’s consider your conclusions for a moment,” he said. “First hypothesis: I was raised on a primitive planet. What evidence supports this?”

Ezra almost pushed the issue, but this new question was just strange enough to give him pause. A line appeared between his eyebrows as he tried to figure out what Thrawn was getting at. “I told you already,” he said.

“Tell me again.”

Frowning, Ezra said, “How about the complete lack of vehicles, for one? The lack of technology of any kind. The handmade clothes, hut, bowls and spoons, soap, furniture …”

This time, Thrawn’s eyes drifted away in the direction of their shelter, a faint smile touching his lips. Ezra narrowed his eyes at the sight of it.

“What?” he demanded.

The smile disappeared. Thrawn regarded him with a sober expression on his face. “Our current shelter and the items in it are all hand-made or, as you previously mentioned, cobbled together from scrap,” he said. “There is no sign of any type of vehicle, neither land nor space, in the vicinity. Our clothing is admittedly mass-produced, but even this does not necessarily translate to an advanced society, especially since we have already incorporated several animal-skin or fur items into our wardrobes. Do our current circumstances indicate we were both raised on primitive planets?”

Ezra was already impatiently gesturing for Thrawn to get on with it before he was even halfway through. “Okay, okay,” he said. “So that _wasn’t_ your home planet? That’s what you’re saying?”

“You must know it was not,” Thrawn chided, hands clasped behind his back. “If only instinctively. You already commented on my response to the sight of wildflowers.”

 _Karabast._ Ezra clapped a hand to his forehead, so thoroughly exasperated with himself that he didn’t know what to say. That memory within a memory — the one about _some guy_ who went to _some place_ called Copero — had been all about the fact that Thrawn had grown up somewhere _without_ flowers, hadn’t it? So obviously his homeworld couldn’t be the same primitive place where he’d lived in a hut and watched the flowers come in.

“So what _was_ that place, then?” Ezra asked, feeling a headache coming on.

Thrawn’s shoulders twitched in an almost unnoticeable shrug. “You’ll figure it out in time,” he said dryly. “Don’t be discouraged, Commander Bridger. Today’s memories were deliberately layered to deceive you.”

 _Layered?_ Ezra thought. 

“And just what the hell does that mean?” he asked.

Thrawn glanced up at the grey clouds overhead. “We should—”

“What do you mean, _layered_?” Ezra demanded. “You’re telling me you can control what I see when I connect to your mind?”

Thrawn favored him with the blankest look Ezra had seen so far today. 

“You _are_ a novice,” he said with another minute shrug; Ezra wondered if Thrawn’s weird red eyes could see the spike of anger those words produced in him. “And as I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve had some experience with Jedi. Today’s memories were from a time when I spoke very little Basic and thought primarily in my native language; for you, I simply translated them into Basic and arranged them at the forefront of my mind.”

“You laid a trap for me so I couldn’t get to your real memories!” said Ezra, aghast.

“No,” said Thrawn, his eyes flickering narrower for half a second. “I presented you with real memories of an insubstantial nature to _distract_ you from more revealing _but equally real_ memories. Your progress is not unimpressive, Commander. In fact, in one instance you broke through the memory I had prepared for you, extracting a similar one from the same period.”

The wildflower memory — but that hadn’t been deliberate on Ezra’s end. In fact, he suspected it had more to do with Thrawn than with any of his own efforts. He’d been no better than a passive observer, letting the unfamiliar sights and sounds overwhelm him, floating aimlessly from one scene to the next; if Thrawn’s innocuous memory of wildflowers had somehow overlapped with a more personal one, it was probably nothing more sinister or deliberate than the natural way one thought tends to spark another. Ezra couldn’t even claim credit for that.

And that memory, the one he’d allegedly broken through — had it really been genuine? _Entirely_ genuine? He was certain there had been blurry vision in the memory — maybe even tears — but if so, they’d been completely disconnected from any type of emotion, like they’d welled up out of nowhere, caused by nothing. Could it be a fake? One memory spliced with another — a scene of Thrawn sitting on the grass, observing the wildflowers, seamlessly melded with another memory of wind or smoke bringing water to his eyes?

Ezra scowled down at his feet, unable to make heads or tails of it. His frustration threatened to bubble over, kept in check only by the enormous sobriety of the entire situation — the shipwreck of the ISD _Chimaera_ and the bombing of Lothal, the deaths of all those crewmembers, the forty-eight days he’d spent stranded with one of the people he hated most in the world now relegated to his only companion. 

Thrawn seemed to sense everything boiling up inside of Ezra, though he didn’t acknowledge it; he backed away physically as well as emotionally, turning the conversation to lighter ground.

“We should return to the shelter,” he said, glancing once more at the sky. “It’s going to storm.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra and Thrawn make an animal friend. Beware of gore!

Forty-nine days. Ezra marked it on his calendar after his mid-day nap; when they’d first arrived, he’d kept track of the passing time by carving the tally marks into a nearby tree, but Thrawn had complained — firstly because it would harm the tree (which was a completely krayt-spit argument, in Ezra’s opinion; they’d already harmed plenty of trees building their shelter) and secondly because “It may be advantageous to leave no evidence of our time here.”

Or more specifically, Thrawn said, the exact _amount_ of their time spent here. Whatever that meant.

Either way, Ezra hadn’t stopped counting the days; he’d only moved the calendar into his own shelter, where Thrawn couldn’t see it. With today marked off, he poked his head out the door and found Thrawn himself was nowhere in sight. 

“This better not be a test,” Ezra muttered. He poked around the clearing for a moment, glancing aimlessly at the woodshed, full to the brim — the traps, set and ready — the finished shelters, the sap collected in a duraplast container. 

There was either too much work to do in one day or there was nothing to do at all, Ezra reflected. That was the worst part of being stranded out here — Thrawn was bearable once you got used to him, but you could _never_ get used to the boredom. 

Ezra slipped his jacket on, looking around for any sign of Thrawn. It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear while Ezra was sleeping, but usually he was back by the time Ezra woke up; the only reason he knew about Thrawn's occasional disappearances at all was because he’d sometimes woken before his four hours were up and found Thrawn gone. 

Sighing, Ezra stretched his arms across his chest. The sun was starting to come down from its apex, so he knew for certain he wasn’t wrong about the time. 

“Kriff, I don’t wanna do this,” he said.

He forced his mind to relax; in a way, it felt like his brain was melting or uncoiling, each part of it stretching out in search of other living beings. He skimmed over bacteria in the soil and air, insects in the trees, small animals and birds in the forest. But it wasn’t until he reached the wreckage of the _Chimaera_ that he caught hold of the faint signal from Thrawn’s mind.

Ezra grabbed onto it with everything he had, clawing his way into a connection, ignoring the headache that came with it. Thrawn was too far away for Ezra to get a good reading; he’d have to go to him if they were going to train.

Gradually, Ezra let the connection slip away. But he didn’t start for the wreckage; he stood in the center of the clearing, his feet glued to the ground, and tried to convince himself to move.

His mouth twisted. Maybe he didn’t have to go. He’d trained every day so far this week, and it wasn’t like they were on a schedule here. If he wanted a break, he could take a break. He'd earned it, hadn't he? Wouldn't Kanan have let him take a break?

He stared into the forest in the direction of the _Chimaera_. He couldn’t convince himself to go forward and he couldn’t convince himself to turn away. What did Thrawn _do_ out there every day, anyway? Why wait until Ezra was asleep, when they both knew exactly where he was sneaking off to? Did he go out there at night, too — did he even sleep at all?

Groaning, Ezra buried his face in his hands. That bastard _knew_ he wanted answers, but he couldn’t think of anything worse than walking to the _Chimaera_. He stretched out again, this time trying harder to get a good grasp on Thrawn’s thoughts — if he could read his mind from way out here, then he wouldn’t need to go to the _Chimaera_ at all.

But Thrawn was more elusive than ever before. Inside his mind, Ezra saw only that impenetrable wall of ciphers, the symbols flashing from one to the next so quickly there was no hope of even recognizing one. Ezra traversed the spindly architecture of Thrawn's mind as best he could; he felt like a blind man climbing up a cliff without anyone to guide him. It simply didn’t seem like there were any memories for him to access; it was like standing in a big, empty chamber and having someone tell him to start opening doors — only there _weren’t_ any doors. Not a single one.

Sighing, he started off for the _Chimaera_. He kept the link open, allowing Thrawn’s mind and the swirl of numbers and ciphers therein to guide him — and distract him from the reality of where he was going.

Two kilometers later, he could smell the wreckage, even though he couldn’t see it yet through the woods. His connection with Thrawn’s mind fluctuated on and off, sometimes seeming to disappear entirely — and since he couldn’t distract himself any longer, not with the smell of death all around him, Ezra let the connection go. He walked the last few yards through the forest, emerging into a clearing full of fallen, splintered trunks and flattened plants.

The Star Destroyer was twisted and misshapen, recognizable only by its size. A single dead purrgil was crushed beneath it, one tentacle outstretched. It was turning black from exposure and rot, parts of it bursting open; Ezra averted his eyes, scouting around the clearing for any sign of Thrawn.

He walked past orderly piles of debris which Thrawn must have removed from the ship on one of his visits here, probably trying to get deeper into the wreck. He circled around a large patch of upturned ground, refusing to think about who might be buried there, and how recently they might have been pulled from the _Chimaera_ and interred in the ground.

“Thrawn?” Ezra called. He almost gagged as he said it, covering his mouth and nose. The smell of decay made his eyes water; he told himself it was coming from the purrgil — and it was, to an extent — but this didn’t really help.

Quickly, he paced away from the wreck, moving north into the woods. The smell faded a little, allowing him to open up his mind again and search for Thrawn. But now, for whatever reason, the connection simply wasn’t there. He wandered farther, confused and lost, trying to use the Force to locate Thrawn. It was like using a faulty navigation system; he couldn’t seem to find _anything,_ and the signal kept going in and out.

Then, abruptly — another kilometer north from the crash — he found Thrawn sitting with his legs stretched out before him on a low branch of a tree. His arms were crossed; he was craning his neck to look down at the soil beneath him, an expression of utter concentration on his face. There was a knife holstered on his hip and beside him, hanging from a branch higher up, was the woven back creel they used when they went out hunting. There was something large, furry, and very dead in it, but Ezra couldn’t tell what.

“Take care,” Thrawn said tonelessly as Ezra approached. “There’s an animal burrowing through.”

Ezra froze, one foot inches above the ground. For a moment, his eyes shot to the basket, expecting the killed animal to move, but then he realized Thrawn was talking about something in the ground. He reached out to the Force to make the long jump from where he stood to a branch near Thrawn’s—

—and fell on his face in the dirt instead.

“Careful,” Thrawn admonished him. Ezra scrambled to his feet, intimately aware of the earth pulsing beneath him, and hurried up onto the other branch. His mind raced, jumping from one topic (the failed jump; what the kriff was that? Since when could he not _jump_?) to the other (the _earth_ was _pulsing_ ).

Thrawn didn’t even glance his way as Ezra perched on the branch. His eyes were firmly on the soil beneath them.

“You think it’s an animal?” Ezra asked, eyeing the ground suspiciously. The dirt here was loosely packed and covered in debris from the forest floor. As he watched, something below ground — something small — pushed up against the dirt and debris, lifting it up an inch or so but failing to break through.

“I certainly don’t think it’s a _person_ ,” Thrawn said.

“Very funny.” Ezra held onto a knot in the trunk above his head and shifted position, getting his feet underneath him so that he was crouched on the branch and could see the ground better. “How’d you find this?”

Thrawn didn’t answer. The pulsing below them stopped for a long moment before resuming again a few inches to the east. 

“What do you think it is, exactly?” Ezra asked, changing tactics. Thrawn still didn’t look at him, but he gave a slight shrug.

“Some sort of… do you speak Sy Bisti, by chance?”

Startled, Ezra said, “No?”

With an almost inaudible sigh, Thrawn looked away from the pulsing ground and made a strange cupping gesture with his hands. “I believe it’s some sort of burrowing creature,” he said. “A small and likely furry animal which lives in tunnels of its own making underground. It may be blind. It may also be a large arachnid of some type, although I have not seen much evidence here to indicate the existence of large arachnids.” He made the gesture again, one hand scooping into the other. “There is a Basic word for it,” he said, eyebrows furrowing. “Some sort of _uvikizu_ or _umagqu_.” 

“What, like a mole?” Ezra asked. Then, eyebrows raised, “Are you not fluent in Basic??”

Thrawn glanced at him, poised to ask a question of his own — deflecting, no doubt — but then his head swiveled suddenly and he looked back down at the ground. The loose earth jumped up an inch or two and seemed to scatter, and from beneath it burst a small, furry creature, no bigger than a mouse and evidently blind.

“ _Uvikizu_ ,” said Thrawn with a satisfied nod.

“Yup, that’s a mole,” said Ezra. Feeling a little silly now for jumping into the tree, he let his legs dangle off the side of the branch and dropped back down. The mole glanced around sightlessly before burrowing back into the earth a few inches away from its tunnel exit.

“Commander Bridger,” Thrawn said as Ezra turned away, “why did you not simply look into my mind to confirm what I meant by _uvikizu_?”

Ezra hesitated, looking back at Thrawn over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

Still relaxed on the branch, Thrawn said, “Our communication was breaking down due to a language barrier. You held the tools to fix it in your hands. You could have simply used the Force to see which animal I was imagining, and then you could have translated its name into Basic for me. Why didn’t you?”

Ezra didn’t answer for a moment, temporarily flummoxed. “I guess it just didn’t occur to me,” he said, feeling a little bit attacked. “I mean, why didn’t you bring it up, if it’s that important?”

“I wished to see whether you would solve the problem on your own,” said Thrawn levelly. He uncrossed his ankles and stepped off his branch; he was tall enough that he didn’t have to jump like Ezra had. He crouched low to the ground, skimming his hand over the loose dirt about a meter from where the mole had disappeared. 

“If you’re about to reach into the earth and literally grab a mole right now—” Ezra started.

Thrawn reached into the earth and grabbed a mole. 

“How the _hell—_ ” said Ezra.

“This might be useful,” Thrawn said, examining the stunned rodent in his hand before placing it back on the ground. It tunneled right back into the collapsed passage from which Thrawn had snatched it. “Do you understand how I located the mole?”

“Uh, no?” Ezra said, eyes tracking over the ground.

“Good. That’s ideal.” Thrawn stood up, clapping the dirt off his hands. “Use the Force,” he said. “Extract the mole.”

Ezra frowned at him, but after a moment, he knelt down on the ground nearby, examining the loose earth carefully. It should be simple enough to do; with the Force, he could sense the life-giving energy of any creature nearby. He’d be able to find it even faster than Thrawn had. The scattering of dirt across the surface caught his eye, making a red flag shoot up inside his head. Belatedly, he realized there was no grass growing here, but there was plenty of _dead_ grass, recently uprooted, lying nearby.

“Were you … _digging_ around here?” Ezra asked, eyes tracking over the dirt.

“Yes,” said Thrawn simply, collecting the hunting creel from the tree and adjusting the shoulder straps that held it on his back. 

“Why?”

“Loose earth attracts burrowing creatures such as moles,” said Thrawn.

For Ezra, this raised more questions than it answered. He brushed them aside for the moment, preferring to open himself up to the Force and find the mole. He breathed in deeply, taking in the scents and sounds of the forest, reaching out to the plants, the trees, the insects and birds and…

Nothing. He couldn’t sense _anything_.

Frowning harder, he turned his attention to the one living being he knew for sure was in the area — Thrawn — and tried to sense him. Physically, he could see Thrawn standing nearby, but other than that, he was — in a manner of speaking — invisible. His mind simply wasn’t there; it couldn’t be accessed in the slightest, like the big, spacious chamber Ezra saw yesterday had simply packed up and left.

As the silence wore on, Thrawn tilted his head and stepped closer, circling around until he stood directly next to Ezra.

“Well?” he asked.

Ezra gave his head a sharp, brisk shake. “I can’t sense _anything_ ,” he said. “It’s like it’s just gone. And not just the mole, either; it’s like _everything_ is gone.”

If this information surprised Thrawn, he didn’t show it. He walked a few meters to the northeast with his hands on the straps of his back creel, watching the ground and placing his steps carefully. Then he stopped again, apparently arbitrarily, and planted his feet.

“Come over here,” he told Ezra, “and try again.”

Ezra pushed to his feet with a sigh and hurried over, dropping to his knees again. He stayed engaged to the Force the entire time, but still there was nothing. Grimly, he shook his head. Thrawn knelt down across from him, using one finger to trace slowly through the earth.

“It’s here,” Thrawn said. “You cannot sense it?”

Ezra focused everything he had on that damn mole, but he didn’t get even a flicker of life energy in return. “No,” he said. Thrawn eyed him speculatively, his finger still moving gradually across the dirt.

“Do you trust that the mole is where I say it is?” Thrawn asked.

“I don’t know,” said Ezra with a loud, frustrated sigh. “I guess. Why?”

Thrawn broke eye contact and gave a disinterested shrug. “I suppose it doesn’t matter; I was only curious.” He stopped tracing the mole’s path and stood. When Ezra did the same thing, Thrawn glanced at him and said, “You don’t typically join me at this time of day. Why did you come?”

Ezra stumbled over his own feet at this question. For the umpteenth time in the last twenty minutes, he felt like he was losing his grip. “I thought you _wanted_ me to come find you,” he said. “I thought this was some kind of test.”

Thrawn only tilted his head to the side, regarding Ezra with puzzled eyes.

“You’re normally back by the time I wake up,” Ezra said, even more baffled than before. “I just thought this was another mind-reading training thing. Like I was supposed to wake up, notice you were missing, and use the Force to come find you.”

Thrawn’s expression shifted at that, but Ezra couldn’t quite read him. He clasped his hands behind his back, looking off into the woods to the south of them, and his expression changed again.

“I am amenable to further training today,” said Thrawn, “but I think any training attempts in this particular area would be unwise.”

His eyes shifted to the side, catching Ezra’s gaze for just a second.

“For the moment,” Thrawn added. 

Ezra thought of the _Chimaera’s_ nearby wreckage and then of the inexplicable loss of his senses and couldn’t help but agree. He watched Thrawn re-pack the collapsed tunnel and then they both walked back to the campsite together, circling the wreckage through the trees to avoid the smell. Ezra thought of that large patch of upturned ground, the impromptu burial site Thrawn must have dug all on his own while Ezra was sleeping.

His chest tightened at the thought of that. If anyone should be burying the crewmembers of the ISD _Chimaera_ , it was Ezra. He still couldn’t be certain what caused the purrgils to abandon the ship before it was safely landed, but he knew that of the two of them — him and Thrawn — only Ezra had the chance to save everybody that day.

And he hadn’t. Enemies or not, those people were dead because of him … but he still couldn’t force himself to leave his shelter and help Thrawn bury them for four hours a day, even when he _knew_ that was what Thrawn was doing. Most days, he pushed the issue out of his mind, refusing to think about it, to dwell on Thrawn’s whereabouts or activities, but now he had incontrovertible proof.

Thrawn was burying his crew members’ bodies; Ezra was letting them rot.

A kilometer from home, Ezra veered into the bushes, grabbing onto the tree as he bent at the waist. Bile crawled up his throat, burning its way through his esophagus as he retched. Behind him, he sensed Thrawn hesitating, hovering a few yards away and coming no closer.

As he vomited, a small part of his brain noted that he could sense things through the Force again. When he wiped his mouth and stepped away from the trees, Thrawn didn’t meet his eyes.

They resumed their walk, Thrawn moving a bit slower than before, Ezra moving faster as if he could escape the embarrassment of puking for no reason. After a second, Thrawn sped up to match his pace.

“Are you ill again?” he asked, not glancing Ezra’s way.

Ezra sighed. He could taste bile on his tongue. “I’m fine.”

Thrawn dropped the subject; it was likely he’d figured out what was really wrong on his own, Ezra guessed. Not like it took a genius to figure it out. They returned to the campsite in complete silence, neither of them really acknowledging the fact that Ezra had puked his guts out a kilometer back. Thrawn unfastened the shoulder straps, letting the back creel fall to the ground behind him.

Ezra saw to the fire while Thrawn dragged the slain animal off to the side. The birds were singing, and as Ezra stacked firewood in the pit he noticed something — when he let his mind drift away, he could sense the insects burrowing under the bark in the nearby trees; he could sense leaves and flowers budding, taking in the sunlight, and small animals — moles like the one Thrawn had caught — making tunnels beneath his feet.

He could use the Force again … for some reason. So that was cool, he supposed, but it felt like a hollow victory. What he'd done back there — the moment of weakness, letting his emotions take him over, losing control — it wasn't behavior fit for a Jedi. if Kanan could see him now, he'd be ashamed. 

_There is no emotion,_ Ezra thought. _There is peace._

As the fire took hold and Thrawn worked steadily on the slain animal, skinning and preparing it for cooking and preservation, Ezra allowed himself to melt into the Force. He relished the sense of connection, the familiar bond to the energy around him. He hadn’t noticed it when it suddenly left him, but now that it was back, he felt like a drowning man getting his first breath of air. 

The sun crawled by overhead, edging deeper into the afternoon. When Ezra glanced behind him, he found Thrawn closing the makeshift refrigeration unit they’d buried underground. He hung the animal’s hide flesh-up on a nearby log and turned to catch Ezra’s eyes.

“Would you like to try?” Thrawn asked, holding his knife out to Ezra handle-first.

Ezra eyed the mess of skin and blood with distaste. “No, thanks.”

“You’ll appreciate both the knowledge and the practice when I die,” Thrawn said in the exact same tone Ezra’s parents used to use when they said things like _You have to know how to run the dishwasher for when we’re gone_.

“Ugh. You’re not dying any time soon.” 

Thrawn’s lips pulled down in a facial shrug, and with another sigh Ezra pushed to his feet and joined him, staying back a few steps. He crossed his arms over his chest. “You do it. I’ll watch.”

Thrawn flipped the knife over but still hesitated. “Information is better retained through practice than observation.”

“I’ll watch,” said Ezra firmly. Finally, Thrawn relented and turned away, using the edge of his knife to scrape what little flesh remained away from the pelt. Ezra had only watched him do this once before, and ever since then, he’d made himself scarce whenever an animal was killed.

In the past, he’d half-believed Thrawn didn’t really know what he was doing with the hides — that it was some sort of bogus flex, like he was trying to prove he knew more about wilderness survival than Ezra, and he’d figured out that Ezra didn’t know enough about tanning hides to call him on it. But now, having seen just a small portion of Thrawn’s memories, Ezra was pretty sure this was legit. 

“It’s important,” said Thrawn, “to scrape until you see the pores of the skin, but you must be careful not to puncture the hide.” He eyed Ezra, his face unreadable. “This is where continual practice will aid you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Ezra, waving his hand dismissively. “Is the gross part next?”

Thrawn glanced over at the animal’s severed head, which he had placed facing north on a nearby stump, like he always did during this process. Ezra suspected it was a cultural thing. “Which part is the—”

“You _know_ which part is the gross part.”

Reluctantly, Thrawn admitted, “It’s next.”

“I’ll do the rock-thing, then,” Ezra said, deliberately turning away. “I want nothing to do with the brains.” Then, hearing a quiet hiss of a sigh from Thrawn, he added, “And don’t pull the ‘when I die’ stunt again. It doesn’t work on me. I would _love_ if you died.”

Thrawn continued working on the hide with a slight nod of his head. “Shall we train, then?” he asked, scraping off another layer of flesh. Ezra made a face.

“I guess,” he said. “Can we do that while you’re working?”

“I’m a passive agent in this exercise,” Thrawn said, not glancing Ezra’s way. Instead, his eyes landed rather pointedly on a large, coarse rock sitting nearby. When the fleshing and braining were done, it would be Ezra’s job to rough up the pelt with that rock. “Can you do this while _you’re_ working?” Thrawn asked.

Ezra shrugged, half-annoyed by the question and half-curious, but too grossed out to really think about it. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“Can you simultaneously read my mind and pay attention to the tanning process?” Thrawn challenged.

“Ugh, _yes_ ,” Ezra said, throwing up his hands. “Okay? Are we doing this or what?”

Thrawn turned his attention back to the hide, committing himself to the gruesome task at hand. That was as much of a _yes_ as Ezra was going to get, he suspected. He looked around for a decent spot to sit down and made himself comfortable, legs crossed, eyes closed.

Mind open.

He followed the threads of Thrawn’s mind, the channel between them easier to traverse today than it was yesterday. There were still portions of Thrawn’s mind — large portions — that seemed impossible to access, so off-limits that Ezra couldn’t even figure out which direction to face in order to chase them down. But the connection came quickly and smoothly, and seemed somehow more full than it had the last time they did this.

And then, just as he was really starting to feel good about himself, something changed.

_I don’t enjoy doing this either._

The words echoed all around Ezra, overlapping with the familiar ciphers pressing against his mind. His eyes snapped open, thrusting the connection into the background of his brain so he could stare at Thrawn.

“Did you just say something?” Ezra demanded.

Thrawn glanced sideways at him.

“I heard you say ‘I don’t enjoy doing this either,’” Ezra said. The tight look on Thrawn’s face suddenly relaxed a little and he turned back to his tanning.

“I didn’t say anything aloud,” he said. “I was thinking.”

“In Basic?” asked Ezra, delighted and confused all at once. He’d never successfully read a thought off of Thrawn before.

“I do occasionally think in Basic,” said Thrawn a tad wryly. “It has been my primary language for many years.”

“But did you _mean_ for me to catch that thought?” asked Ezra eagerly. “I mean, was it like the other day when you — when you translated your memories into Basic, or whatever you did, and let me see them on purpose?”

Thrawn had the hide entirely clean now, and was almost done with the final layer of scrapings. Ezra could see the pores in the skin; he felt his enthusiasm die a little when Thrawn deemed the hide ready for the next step and stood up, walking over to the animal’s severed head.

“Ugh,” said Ezra, looking away.

“I’ll answer your question if you assist me with the braining process,” Thrawn said.

“ _Dude_ ,” said Ezra.

“Or you can attempt to extricate the answer from my mind,” said Thrawn with a one-shouldered shrug. 

Ezra frowned and closed his eyes, quickly probing around to do just that. He found nothing; there was no more Basic in Thrawn’s mind that he could see. The letters and numbers he saw were unfamiliar and scriptive, nothing like the boxy no-nonsense lines of Aurebesh. When he opened his eyes again, Thrawn was watching him knowingly.

“What do you want me to do?” Ezra asked, eyeing the animal’s head with distaste and resignation. Thrawn held it in both hands, facing Ezra.

“Simply use your Force to crush a portion of its skull,” Thrawn said, indicating a spot on the crown with his finger. “A small portion will suffice; a hole at the apex of the cranium — right here — would be ideal.”

Ezra turned his face away so he didn’t have to see the end result. He reached out blindly with his hand, allowing the Force to guide him, and felt a sort of cosmic ripple as a rough hole was punctured in the animal’s skull, more or less where Thrawn had wanted it.

“Excellent,” said Thrawn crisply.

“Great,” said Ezra, still not looking. “And nobody says ‘use _your_ Force,’ by the way. It’s ‘use _the_ Force.’ You sound like an idiot saying _use your Force.”_

Thrawn didn’t seem too concerned about that. He held the animal’s head upside down over a deep clay pot, one of the first items they’d made after the crash. Ezra snuck a quick peek at the brains slowly draining into the pot and then looked away again.

“I’ll, uh, fetch the water,” he said, searching for any excuse to get away.

“Four cups,” Thrawn informed him. Ezra hurried to the river, gathering approximately four cups — and taking his time about it. He waited until he heard Thrawn approaching the fire pit before he decided the task was done. He joined Thrawn by the fire, pouring the four cups of water into the clay pot with the brains and then stepping back again as Thrawn set it above the flames to boil.

“It was not deliberate,” said Thrawn.

For a moment, Ezra didn’t know what he meant. Thrawn glanced at him, caught his eye, and didn’t look away.

“I did not intend for you to hear me,” Thrawn clarified. “Like you, I find the tanning process distasteful; it was weighing heavily on my mind, and you must have caught it by skill alone, not through my help.”

“Oh,” said Ezra. He tried not to grin, but it was almost impossible to hold back at least a _small_ smile. He shoved his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight from foot to foot as Thrawn adjusted the clay pot; he wanted to ask more, really cement the fact that he’d done something right, but he couldn’t figure out a subtle way to do it.

The flames licked at Thrawn’s bare hands as he settled the pot low over the fire. He drew back eventually and glanced at Ezra, a speculative look in his eyes.

“Have you made any progress,” he asked, “regarding the subject’s emotional state?”

Ezra’s smile faded. The subject?

“You mean _your_ emotional state?” he asked. 

Thrawn shrugged and nodded, as if it didn’t really matter that he saw himself as a test subject. “Did you pick up on anything?”

Ezra could feel his victory sizzling into the void. He tracked back over the last few minutes, trying to immerse himself fully in the memory of what he’d seen — if he’d missed anything important, maybe he could discover it by picking over the data once again.

But there was nothing. He turned to Thrawn with a frown, shaking his head.

“You didn’t _feel_ anything as you thought it,” he said. “You were just .. thinking.”

One of Thrawn’s eyebrows twitched upward. Ezra scowled down at his shoes.

“I was thinking the words, ‘ _I don’t enjoy doing this either,_ ’ with no detectable emotions attached to that sentiment?” Thrawn asked. He studied Ezra, giving him a chance to respond, then prompted him again. “You sensed no irritation or resentment?”

“No,” said Ezra. He squinted up at Thrawn, still scowling a little. Thrawn’s face was completely placid, his features calm and relaxed; he didn’t _look_ like a guy admitting to resentment.

“Regarding physical sensations,” he said, allowing Ezra a brief reprieve on the subject of emotions, “did you experience anything worth noting?”

Ezra wrinkled his nose as he thought it over. “I could feel the knife in your hand,” he said eventually. “And the sun on the back of your neck.”

Thrawn watched him, waiting for more. 

“Slight physical exhaustion?” Ezra said with a shrug. “I mean, nothing out of the ordinary. Just like, slight tiredness from, you know, walking to the _Chimaera_ and back, and hunting and all that. And carrying that _thing_ on your back.” He gestured vaguely at the pot full of brains.

“No sensation of pain?” Thrawn asked.

Steam rose from the pot over the fire. Ezra furrowed his eyebrows.

“Pain?” he asked.

“Perhaps a sharp spike of pain,” Thrawn said, his eyes boring into Ezra’s. He reached up and touched his right temple, indicating a headache. “Right here.”

“No,” said Ezra, baffled. “Why? Were you in — did I —?”

“No,” said Thrawn immediately, breaking eye contact. He stared off into the woods for a moment, deep in thought. Even standing there with his hair uncombed and his skin streaked with dirt and gore, he maintained the perfect posture of an Imperial warlord, back straight and chin held high. “I felt no pain, Commander Bridger, and I find that very unusual. I considered the possibility that you were transferring the pain into yourself, from my nerve endings to yours, or perhaps discharging any negative sensation into the Force before I could register it. But evidently, that is not the case.” 

This explanation didn’t really do much to clear things up for Ezra. “Why would you be in pain to begin with?” he asked, struggling to understand. “Are you saying you had a headache _before_ I read your mind and then it went away after, or …?”

“I am saying there was no pain at all,” said Thrawn patiently, “but past experience indicates there _should_ have been.” He touched his right temple again. “A brief, sharp pain, located here and spreading throughout the rest of the body. The exact duration of the mind-reading correlates directly to the intensity of the pain; the more layers of memory you expose, the more pain I experience.”

Ezra blinked and opened his mouth, unsure what to say. He didn’t get the chance to organize his thoughts before Thrawn went on.

“Let’s hypothesize,” said Thrawn, “that you manage to submerge yourself so deeply in my mind that you uncover detailed, specific memories of military secrets — perhaps a strategic plan as well as specific tactical details — laid out in plain Basic. By the time you reach that point, I should be in agony so intense I can no longer stand.” He inclined his chin, his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes far away. “Previously, I have assumed this pain was a natural byproduct of cross-species interrogation — I had reason to believe it did not apply to same-species interrogations at the time. However, it now seems more closely related to the polarization of Force abilities you mentioned earlier — the Dark Side and the Light Side.”

He glanced at Ezra; Ezra met his eyes, blinking rapidly, the same cautious way he would stare at a bright sun. 

“You offered to be my test subject thinking it would _hurt_ you?” he said, feeling dazed.

“I offered to be your test subject assuming your skills would initially be so weak as to evoke nothing more than a slight headache,” Thrawn corrected. “Though I was prepared for the eventuality of more severe pain, yes.”

Ezra opened his mouth, once again not really sure what he was going to say.

“That is not the issue at hand,” Thrawn said before he could figure it out. “To this date, I have been interrogated only by Sith Lords or men who would eventually become Sith Lords. If your technique does not cause pain, it may be indicative of a deficiency in your skills or general level of concentration. It may also mean that your technique is simply different in nature from Darth Vader’s or Emperor Palpatine’s.”

Well, if those were the only two options, then Ezra knew which theory _he_ preferred. He didn’t really see what the big deal was; it sounded to him like Dark Side users caused pain when they read people’s minds and Light Side users didn’t, and that was a good thing. It was as simple as that. 

But Thrawn was looking at him speculatively, like it _was_ a big deal. Like there was something going on that Ezra didn’t understand in the slightest. 

“Let’s try again,” he said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra breaks through to Thrawn's real memories. This time, he bites off a little more than he can chew.

The animal he kills is almost three meters tall and outweighs him by perhaps as many as three hundred kilos. In ordinary circumstances, he wouldn’t have killed it at all. It’s too far from his shelter and he didn’t come prepared with a sled to drag it back across the snow. But he had no choice; it panicked when it saw him and attacked out of pure instinct, and he could only survive if he killed it first.

He touches its flank, unmoving now but still warm. Its fur is thick but not coarse; for a moment he simply kneels there, the snow seeping through the legs of his worn-out black uniform, the knees reinforced with patches made of hide.

And then he pulls out his knife. 

He makes incisions in even circles around each of the beast’s hooves, slicing neatly through the pelt and, if he gauges the depth correctly, the membrane underneath which connects the flesh to the animal’s muscles. Moving up, he runs one hand down its spine, searching for the right spot to bore a hole—

“Oh, _come_ on,” Ezra said, forcing his way out of the memory and opening his eyes. “I say no to learning how to tan an animal hide, so you line up an educational memory and just lecture me in your _mind_ instead?”

“For some unknowable reason,” said Thrawn from the other side of the fire, watching the pot as it boiled, “I simply can’t stop thinking about tanning.”

Had Ezra thought recently that Thrawn was bearable, once you got used to him? He was reevaluating that statement.

“Let’s just make it a rule that I can only be trained in one thing at a time,” Ezra said. “We’re focusing on mind-reading for now. Maybe when I _finish_ mind-reading we can move on to gross stuff, okay?”

Thrawn gave him a dubious look, but Ezra was already throwing himself back into Thrawn’s mind, chasing down each individual strand of thought until it led him to a memory.

He stands in a training room adjacent to his office, his white tunic hung up in a closet nearby. Before him stand two massive assassin droids, neither of them activated until he crosses the room and hits a timed switch on each droid’s chest plate. 

He’s already at the other end of the training room when their eyes light up and they stir into action. They don’t take long to warm up to a fight; seconds later, they are after him, one coming at him from the side and the other charging directly toward him. His eyes dart from one to the next in rapid-fire analysis, predicting which will strike him first.

He ducks just as the first droid swings for his head; its durasteel arm, thirty times stronger than the average human man and twenty-nine-point-five times stronger than the average Chiss, sweeps through thin air. Simultaneously, he throws himself forward across the floor, landing in a forward roll just to the side of the second droid’s feet. 

He can sense them recalibrating, figuring out their next blows before he even hits the ground. As he rolls, the first droid swivels on a pivot point in its waist, turning to face his new location. The second droid steps back, lining itself up perfectly for what could be a devastating blow to his ribs — but he dodges it again, this time swiveling away from both droids at the same time.

The first droid’s arm collides with the second droid’s chassis, sending them both a little off-kilter. Their next blows are fainter as a result, easier to block.

And then, through the open door to the training room, he spots an unfamiliar man walking by — someone dressed as a stormtrooper with the white insignia V-1399 on his shoulder, but without the familiar gait and body language belonging to Geyes, the trooper who wears that armor every day.

 _Deactivation code: Rukh,_ he says, and the doors slide closed behind him even as the droids power down. 

“Wait,” Ezra said, pulling out of the memory to glare at Thrawn. It took him a moment to realize Thrawn wasn’t where he thought he was — the pot was missing from the fire pit, and when Ezra looked around, he saw Thrawn kneeling in front of the animal hide several meters away, his grotesque concoction sitting off to the side as he coarsened the skin with a rock.

“You may take over if you wish,” he said, sitting back and offering Ezra the rock.

“What? Oh. Right.” Ezra jogged forward a few steps and took the rock without thinking about it, his mind still stuck on the memory he’d just witnessed. “You just showed me a memory I’ve already seen before,” he said.

Thrawn moved away, clearing the space in front of the animal hide. When Ezra didn’t immediately fill his spot, he gestured at the skin. Impatiently, Ezra knelt down and started scraping at the skin with the rock, not really sure what he was doing. 

“Like this?” he asked.

Thrawn nodded. “You saw my training regimen on the _Chimaera_ ,” he said. 

“Yeah, I guess,” said Ezra. “Insane kriffing regimen, by the way. But it’s the exact same one I’ve already seen before, because I was there when it happened. I was the trooper.”

Thrawn didn’t respond, letting Ezra rough up the rest of the skin.

“So did you show me that one on purpose?” Ezra prompted. “Is this just Mess-With-Ezra Day or something?”

“What precisely do you expect?” Thrawn asked, taking a seat nearby. He leaned forward to watch Ezra work, his arms folded on his knees. “You are aware I have tanned hides before in order to make winter clothes, and you know I have trained against assassin droids. Let’s assume for the purposes of this exercise that you are using your Force technique to invade an enemy’s mind for _information,_ not for practice — if the enemy knows you are examining his thoughts and memories, would he not ensure you are presented first and foremost with the memories least likely to offer valuable information? In this case, information you are already aware of or memories you have already seen?”

Ezra frowned, grinding the rock as hard as he dared into the skin without breaking through to the other side. “How would an enemy know if I’m looking into his mind, though?”

Thrawn looked at him as if he were stupid.

“ _What_?” Ezra asked. He turned toward Thrawn and cocked his arm back, threatening half-seriously to throw the rock.

“Even someone who isn’t Force-sensitive can feel it when another being invades his thoughts, whether it causes pain or not,” said Thrawn. His voice was smooth and nonjudgmental, as if to make up for his expression earlier. “It is not dissimilar to a physical sensation of touch.”

Ezra absorbed that, turning back to his chore as he mulled it over. It was reasonable, he supposed — but still annoying. “Are you gonna do that all day, then?” he asked. “I mean, if I go back into your mind again, am I just gonna see more memories of things I’ve seen before?”

“Or memories which are useless to you,” Thrawn agreed. “Unless you manage to penetrate my defenses and find the memories I am deliberately keeping from you.”

Ezra’s interest sparked at that, though he tried not to show it. He thought it over as he finished the roughing, one particular aspect of the memories standing out.

He turned to look at Thrawn over his shoulder. A smile tugged at his lips.

“You’re a _Chiss,_ ” he said.

Thrawn’s expression went from wary to resigned.

“That’s your species name,” said Ezra triumphantly, “isn’t it? In that last memory, you said the assassin droids were twenty-nine times stronger than the average Chiss. Why would you say that if it wasn’t your species? I mean, why would you compare the droids to some random _other_ species, right? It’s gotta be you.”

Thrawn regarded him thoughtfully for a long moment, then gestured for Ezra to move away from the hide. Thrawn took his place, bringing the clay pot and a handmade paintbrush with him. 

“You are correct,” he said, dipping the brush in the awful, watery mixture inside the pot. He spread it onto the skin in careful, even layers, slowly softening the hide. “You see — even repetitive, seemingly useless information can trigger new observations. All it took in this instance was witnessing the same event from a different point of view.”

Ezra stood with his hands on his hips and scoffed. “You’re just trying to cover up the fact that I extracted two things from you in one day.”

Thrawn didn’t bother to respond. He was already starting a second coat on the skin.

With a sigh, Ezra threw himself back into the connection. This time, he decided, he would stick to it — he wouldn’t pull out until he had some new piece of information, something he could say without a doubt that he had earned.

* * *

He lies on the mattress with his boots on, staring up at the bunk overhead. His datapad is propped up on his chest, but the screen is darkened. Above him, someone — a cadet, Ezra figures, but he isn’t sure how he knows the man’s rank — peers down at him over the edge of the top bunk.

 _Are you seriously sleeping with your shoes on?_ the cadet asks.

 _You don’t?_ Thrawn replies. There’s something weird about his voice — a thick accent Ezra has never heard before twisting his words.

The cadet just makes a face.

 _What if an emergency occurs while you are sleeping?_ Thrawn asks. His Basic is definitely off; the Wesks catch on his lips and turn into Vevs. His Reshes seem to get stuck on the tongue, particularly when they show up in the middle of a word. 

_Then you take some time to put your boots on before you go. Do you sleep in your uniform, too?_

_Of course not,_ Thrawn says. Through Thrawn’s eyes, Ezra glances down at his clothes — Imperial-issue athletic trousers, like the kind worn by all cadets during PT, and a sleeveless undershirt. Not quite a uniform, not technically, but close enough that the cadet would probably argue with him about it. He hits the power button on his datapad and lays it aside, settling down against the mattress.

His left hand comes up, closing around the tarnished pendant around his neck. A sense of — the memory flickers — a sense of _something_ engulfs him, a subtle surge of emotion Ezra can’t quite identify. What can it possibly be? Anxiety? Anger? Sadness?

Peace?

The edges of the memory started to blur, specific sights and sounds dissolving all around him. Ezra panicked, fought for control, and found himself slipping into another memory instead.

He can tell the lock is broken before he’s close enough to even try the key. He approaches it slowly, but not so slowly as to give away his knowledge in case the saboteur is watching. By the time he reaches the door, he has determined there are no traps waiting for him; it’s simply a broken lock, a barracks room entered by someone who shouldn’t have access. He swipes his key for appearance’s sake and pushes his way inside.

The room is almost entirely untouched. His and Vanto’s ( _Vanto?_ Ezra wonders) beds are still made, their chairs pushed into their respective desks. This is not, then, sabotage for the nightly inspections — but there are faint heat signatures left behind on the closet doors, and it is clear the lock on Thrawn’s wardrobe has been picked, and clumsily so; he can see minuscule metal filings on the carpet beneath it.

He opens the wardrobe door. On the floor are his uniform items, each one removed from its hanger and dropped carelessly on the ground. He can see the rips in them from where he stands; someone has made large cuts in each article of clothing while he and Vanto were away, but it does not appear Vanto’s clothes have been similarly defaced.

The memory shifted, splintering into little pieces again, dragging Ezra forward several hours in time. He sits on the bottom bunk from the first memory, bent over a pair of black uniform trousers — part of a cadet’s uniform, he realizes belatedly. He’s mending them by hand; by now he has two full uniform sets hanging in the wardrobe.

 _I didn’t know you could sew,_ says that other cadet — Vanto, apparently.

 _Yes, certainly you did,_ says Thrawn. The cadet’s nose wrinkles, but he doesn’t argue.

 _I guess I should’ve,_ he says, _now that I think about it._ _But still … furs are a bit different from Imperial uniforms, don’t you think? I mean, that’s an entirely different skill set._

 _Yes. But I have mended uniforms before,_ Thrawn says. 

_Well, still … it’s not right for them to do stuff like that to you. You know, if they_ —

The walls broke down; Cadet Vanto’s voice faded away. Ezra grasped around for something deeper, something different; he swept away shards of memories that seemed too easy to grasp, abandoning them in search of something else. It felt like he was swimming in a pit of thick, drying mud — and with his clothes and boots weighing him down. 

He could feel a new memory twisting in the void around him, almost close enough to touch. But when he reached for it, it seemed to recoil, flinching away from his fingertips. Like it hadn’t been prepared for him. Like it didn’t want to be touched.

He _had_ to get to that memory. If it tried to avoid him, that meant it must be important — or at the very least, it wasn’t part of Thrawn’s neatly-organized “layer” of pre-approved memories selected for Ezra’s viewing. He drew on the Force, using it to propel his consciousness deeper — and simultaneously freezing the memory in place, luring it closer and closer to him.

A flash of white light engulfed him.

_You are being dishonest with me, Mitth’raw’nuruodo._

The words echo around Ezra in an all-too-familiar hiss, freezing his blood cold. He stands in a dark and unfamiliar throne room; a small holodeck is all that separates him from Emperor Palpatine. Through the blue matrix of a holographic star system, he can see the Emperor’s black robes, the yellow eyes, the rows of blunt teeth shaped like gravemarkers that flash each time Palpatine opens his mouth.

With an audible click of bone scraping against bone, his knees bend and he sinks to the ground against his will. The star map looms above him and his eyes track across it as though the Emperor isn’t there. Mentally, he continues their conversation as though nothing has happened, as if he hasn’t been caught in a lie — _allegedly_ caught in a lie — and forced to his knees. 

His mouth is tight. He does not respond to Palpatine’s claim; they have more important tasks at hand, more important topics to discuss, options to consider—

 _You cannot disguise your dishonesty through mere obfuscation,_ Palpatine says. _Not from me._

His voice slices through Thrawn’s thoughts, piercing deep into his mind. Pain blossoms immediately, starting at his right temple and racing down every neuron in his brain, encasing each and every nerve ending in molten ice. 

_It matters not,_ says Palpatine. His voice sounds simultaneously far away and very near. _I will find the truth regardless._

 _I have been..._ says Thrawn. Each word comes out crisp and perfectly pronounced, but the pauses between each syllable betray the effort and energy it costs him to speak. _Entirely honest … with you … my lord._

Still, the pain intensifies and spreads. His lungs burn as though they’ve been filled with glacial water; his throat tightens as if the walls of his esophagus have been lined with glass. He throws all his energy into obfuscation despite the Emperor’s warning, translating recent memories back into the scrambled version of Cheunh he and Thrass used as a code when they were children, overlaying each memory with the black miasmic fog he remembers from the few times he’d been drugged or otherwise intoxicated, giving each scene a distinctive and smothering blur.

And through it all, he offers up a solution, moving quickly, acting entirely by instinct. If this plant is too obvious, there’s nothing he can do about it now, and no time to come up with a better plan:

_Commodore Faro’s face is pinched, her cheeks flushed with anger. She is already shouting when the memory fades into existence, her words blurred and vague at first — but when she lifts a ceramic vase off a stand in Thrawn’s command room and hurls it at him, barely missing his head, suddenly her words become clear._

_“—an entire planet!” she says. Her voice is hoarse from screaming, cracked from emotion. Thrawn ducks when she picks up another art piece_ — _a primitive statue this time_ — _and throws it at him. Her aim is good. It smashes to pieces against the wall._

_She’s still following through on the throw when he reaches her in two great strides, taking advantage of her imbalance with a quickness she doesn’t seem to anticipate. He grabs Faro by the wrists before she can destroy any more of his collection. With his free hand, he pushes her shoulder until her back is against the wall, forcing her to make eye contact with him. He can see from the twitching of her facial muscles that she resents her own anger; she knows he’s manipulated her into responding this way, provoking her with precision and ruthlessness until he got the result he wanted: an outburst of uncharacteristic violence and emotion. She is ashamed of her anger, but not yet sorry for it._

_“Compose yourself, Commodore,” he says, voice cool. “We had no other options.”_

_She bares her teeth, but she doesn’t argue with him. Perhaps she knows it would be unwise to say what she is thinking aloud._

_“The destruction of Koja is … regrettable,” Thrawn allows, “but it is only a minor setback. Their technology was not sufficiently advanced to qualify them as an Imperial ally; nor were their natural resources in any way useful to an Empire at war. There are other planets — more useful planets — at our disposal. Concessions had to be made.”_

_She glowers at him, but the aggression is ebbing out of her; her shoulders slump and Thrawn releases her wrists, allowing her to regain her military bearing._

_“It doesn’t sit right with me, sir,” she says; rather than shrink into the wall, away from him, she pulls herself up to her full height, taking up more space in a psychological game she evidently hopes will make him back away. “I can’t even begin to imagine what the report will_ — _”_

_“I will handle the report,” says Thrawn sharply._

_Her eyes narrow; she is on the verge of arguing with him, he knows. Lowering his voice, desperate to convince her of this, he says, “It will be better for all of us, Commodore, if the Emperor doesn’t know we failed…”_

Darkness seeps in, swallowing up the memory like it has been submerged deep in the oceans back home. Thrawn’s vision blurs as the Emperor releases his mind, but the pain does not fade away — at least, not immediately. It fades into the background, throbbing through every muscle in his body but no longer incapacitating him. 

_Ah, I see now,_ Palpatine says. His amusement is evident; his lips twitch up to reveal a glimpse of rotten teeth. _Listen well, Mitth’raw’nuruodo: it will_ never _benefit you to hide your missteps from me. I, above all others, am your ally here. I cannot mend your errors if you do not bring them to me. Do you understand?_

 _Yes, my lord,_ Thrawn says. His lips are numb, his legs shaking from exhaustion. _I understand._

And then, like a door slamming shut on an open room, the memory was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn loses his temper; Ezra does, too. Beware of gore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For flashback scenes of Thrawn as a child, I decided to keep his name "Thrawn" in prose to keep it less jarring, as we're seeing these memories through Ezra's eyes and that's how he thinks of Thrawn. In dialogue during those scenes, Thrawn's birth name is used instead.

Ezra was back in the real world, blinking and dazed. He sat next to the guttering fire, and he’d barely had time to register the red coals and heaps of ashes before him when a stack of new logs dropped down on the old ones, crushing them into dust. Startled, Ezra looked up and saw Thrawn standing next to him, a pinched expression on his face as he wiped flammable sap off his hands.

 _An entire planet_ — that’s what the woman in Thrawn’s memory had said. Ezra leaned back in his seat, keeping as far away from Thrawn as he could. Trying not to flinch.

Without meeting Ezra’s eyes, Thrawn took a seat across from him on a nearby log. The sun was lower now, Ezra realized, bringing them into late afternoon with approximately ten hours of daylight left. He stared at Thrawn, who had rolled up his sleeves and was now scratching absent-mindedly at a shallow cut on his forearm. He stared into the middle-distance, his expression unreadable.

Ezra’s blood was cold. His limbs felt watery and shaky all at once, like he’d run a long distance. He didn’t want to break the silence — didn’t want to be anywhere near here — but at the same time, the silence itself was unbearable. He felt like if he didn’t say something, he’d probably puke.

“Uh…” he said.

Thrawn didn’t glance his way. Suddenly, it seemed almost impossible to address the bantha in the room. Ezra cast around for something else — anything else — to say and found himself focusing on the cut.

“Uh, is that new?” he asked, voice shaking, feeling ludicrous and surreal. Like this was all happening to someone else.

Thrawn’s eyes flickered toward him. He raised an eyebrow, and Ezra felt his cheeks heating in response.

“The cut?” he said, pointing.

“Yes,” said Thrawn, his voice carefully moderated. “It’s new.”

He averted his gaze again, and now Ezra could see the subtle hints of irritation — or maybe something far more dangerous — on his face, centered in the tightness of his lips and eyes. Thrawn tugged his sleeves back down and, for just a moment, lay one hand flat against his collar bone. It stayed there for the length of one deep breath, and then he let it drop.

“Tell me what you saw,” said Thrawn. His voice was flat now, expressionless. Looking at him closer, Ezra saw pale green stains on the knees of his trousers and wondered — there was fresh green grass all around their campsite, but none near the animal hide, where Thrawn had been kneeling. Had he tripped while Ezra was immersed in his mind? Was that how he’d cut himself?

Only a few seconds of silence passed while Ezra noticed the stains and thought it through, but it was long enough for Thrawn to notice. 

“Yes,” he said dryly, “those are new, too. Tell me what you saw.”

Ezra ignored the request for the second time, his eyes still glued to the grass stains. “Was that because of me?” he asked, reverting (as he always did in situations like this) to his default boldness. A pale smirk tugged at his lips. “I took you by surprise, didn’t I?”

There was a brief pause before Thrawn answered, like he was choosing his words carefully. “You caused me considerable discomfort,” he said, “but I cannot claim to be surprised. Are you unable to sense as much?”

He gestured almost wearily to his head, inviting Ezra to peek inside. Ezra didn’t feel much like accepting that invitation right now.

“Is surprise an emotion?” he asked rhetorically. When it looked like Thrawn might actually answer him, he rushed to add, “Cuz in case you hadn’t noticed, you don’t actually _have_ those.”

Thrawn blinked, his expression giving nothing away. He rested his forehead in his hand, rubbing at it gently as if he had a headache.

“I have emotions,” he said blandly, unconvincingly.

Ezra said nothing. He didn’t know how to explain it to Thrawn, but the stuff he’d witnessed inside the other man’s head was … well, inhuman. There were no emotions attached to anything, and even the subtle mental reactions Thrawn displayed in reaction to certain stimuli couldn’t really be defined or interpreted as feelings. 

“Do you want me to describe the memory, then?” Ezra asked — more because he didn’t want to be the one to break it to Thrawn that he was kind of a sociopath than out of any real desire to describe the memory he’d seen.

Thrawn inclined his head, his eyes narrowed.

“Well, you were in Palpatine’s throne room,” Ezra said uncomfortably. He stared down at the fire, avoiding Thrawn’s gaze. “You were giving him some kind of report about — about a planet you destroyed. And you tried to hide it from him, but he caught you out, so … he …”

Ezra gestured wordlessly at his head. When Thrawn only stared at him, not responding, Ezra forced himself to go on. 

“He read your mind,” Ezra said. “And he found a memory of you talking with that woman, uh …”

“Commodore Faro,” said Thrawn calmly.

Ezra eyed him, unsure what to think. Thrawn’s even tone, juxtaposed with the horrible things he’d done, was making him break out in sweat.

“Commodore Faro,” Ezra repeated. “She was mad at you because you…” His mouth ran dry, then suddenly flooded with bitter saliva. He spit it out onto the ground beside him, feeling for a moment like he might vomit again. Thrawn watched him the entire time, saying nothing, and eventually the feeling subsided and Ezra went on. “Because you destroyed the planet,” he said, and he could hear the venom in his voice. “And you had no _reason_ to do it, either — you said you did it because they weren’t useful, or they couldn’t be used as an ally, as if that justifies—”

“And then?” Thrawn asked calmly.

Ezra glared at him, fury warring against the instinctive fear inside him. 

“Forget the narrative details,” Thrawn said. “We both saw it; there’s no reason to repeat it now. What did you _learn?_ What did you extrapolate from the scene before you? Did you glean anything from my thoughts, my physical sensations, my emotional state—”

“You don’t _have_ an emotional state,” Ezra snapped. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you — you keep asking me that, but you don’t feel _anything_ , even when that Faro lady was throwing stuff at your head! Even when you talked about destroying an _entire planet_ or when Palpatine caught you in a lie and it looked like he might kill you, you didn’t feel _anything._ You have all the same emotions as a kriffing _mouse droid!_ ”

Across from him, Thrawn’s jaw was tight, his eyes seeming to glow more fiercely than they ever had before.

“I _have_ emotions,” Thrawn said, his voice deathly quiet. He stabbed at the fire with a broken stick, then tossed it away and sat back, looking disgusted — with himself or with Ezra, it was impossible to tell. “Right now,” he said, “I’m feeling a significant amount of anger. Take a look.”

Reluctantly, Ezra did just that, allowing his mind to come in contact with Thrawn’s — but only barely. Those all-too-familiar ciphers were unusually chaotic, jumping from one signal to the next, and the very layout of his mind seemed wrinkled and over-layered. But there was no sign of emotion, despite the fact that Ezra could very clearly see the anger on Thrawn’s face.

“There’s nothing,” he said aloud, drawing back. 

“There’s nothing?” Thrawn repeated. He touched his collar bone, laying his palm flat the same way he had earlier, but this time he kept his hand there as he spoke. “You started training in the art of mind-reading three days ago, Commander. With so little experience, your first assumption should be that you’ve made a mistake or are for some reason incapable of reading me. Only a master of the art would sense nothing and reasonably conclude there _is_ nothing. Have you already decided you have nothing more to learn?”

Ezra was smart enough to recognize a trap when he heard one. He glowered at Thrawn, refusing to respond. For a moment, they studied each other, Thrawn’s eyes narrowed and unreadable.

“You are incapable of detecting my emotional state, so you decide there must not _be_ an emotional state to detect,” Thrawn said. “Is that correct?”

When Ezra still didn’t respond, only continued to glare, Thrawn said, “That is the _height_ of arrogance—”

This was too much. Ezra opened his mouth to protest, but Thrawn plowed on, raising his voice even as he kept each syllable tight and controlled, clearly monitoring his tone.

“—but arrogance is what I’ve come to expect from you,” he said. “Your entire military career — short as it may be — has been marked by a _stunning_ amount of arrogance. It is matched only by your ignorance, your eagerness to jump into a mission without any of the necessary information to complete it without casualty. You are a commander, yet you set self-defeating, half-informed goals for yourself and your men and then consider yourself victorious when they are accomplished, unaware of the adverse effects you’ve set into motion.”

“The adverse effects _I’ve_ set into—?!” Ezra started.

“To stop the bombing of Lothal,” said Thrawn, “you set purrgils on an enemy force still in orbit over the very planet you wished to protect, resulting in waves of debris from my fleet which caused more harm to the citizens of Lothal than my own salvo of laserfire. You destroyed the TIE Defender plant on Lothal without even attempting to discern its true purpose — killing civilian workers your Rebel cell claimed to protect — and now, as a direct result of your actions, a much more dangerous weapon is in place somewhere in this galaxy, poised to destroy entire worlds. Had you only done your groundwork first, or bothered to cross-reference your plans with other Rebel cells as _any_ good soldier would do — if you’d spoken with the Alderaanian Senator or his agents—”

Ezra didn’t think about it. His hand shot up of its own volition, palm open, arm outstretched. By pure instinct, he channeled all his rage and fear into the Force, into a single, powerful gust of air. Thrawn didn’t have time to react, to form a defense. Struck in the chest by something invisible, something he could never possibly see or defend against, he seemed to cave in on himself in the first millisecond, hunching over his bruised ribs by instinct as they were pummeled again. And then he hurtled backward, slamming into the dirt and skidding over the grass for several meters. His words were cut off mid-sentence, replaced with unnatural silence — anyone else would have cried out or groaned with the impact, Ezra thought — and he only moved to cover his face as the Force thrust him back against the shelter; the entire frame rocked when Thrawn crashed into it, his back hitting one of the support poles square against his spine. 

For a moment, he lay still and limp in the dirt, his face buried in his arms, and Ezra was horribly certain he’d knocked Thrawn out — but just as concern won out over fury and he rose to help, Thrawn stirred, getting one knee beneath him and pushing himself off the ground. A thin scratch crossed his cheekbone; his hair was mussed and his clothes were dirty, but he was on his feet soon enough, composed and expressionless. As if nothing had happened at all.

The same could not be said for Ezra. His chest was heaving, his hand still outstretched from when he’d pushed Thrawn with the Force. Cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck and the sides of his face, and his lungs felt like they were filled with water; he found it almost impossible to catch his breath. Numbly, he fell backward onto his seat, the motion jarring him straight to his core.

“ _You’re_ the one who destroyed a planet,” he rasped, putting his head between his knees to fight off a sudden bout of nausea. “Not me. Don’t act like I’m the bad guy here.”

He was vaguely aware of Thrawn approaching him, standing opposite Ezra on the other side of the fire.

“I have never destroyed a planet,” said Thrawn coldly. “The planet Koja was under the control of a warlord named Creysis, a ruthless sentient who has subjugated many worlds outside the Empire’s borders. I freed them from his control, as I freed many other planets in the Unknown Regions. Do you know what you saw?”

Ezra buried his fingers in his hair and closed his eyes. He didn’t answer — and then he felt something small hurtling through the air toward him and he stopped its trajectory by instinct, looking up with wide eyes. A small pebble hovered in the air before him, suspended by the Force; across from him, Thrawn was poised to throw another one, his face hard, the cut on his cheekbone bleeding.

“I don’t _know_ , okay?” Ezra said, letting his Force-grip on the pebble relax. It dropped to the ground harmlessly. In response, Thrawn gradually lowered his arm. “You made it up?” Ezra guessed. “To trick him, or something? I don’t know!”

“The memory is not fabricated,” Thrawn said, tossing the other pebble underhanded into the brush. “I could not allow Koja to come under Imperial influence; Creysis targeted them for their vast natural resources. The Empire would do the same, leaving the people to suffer.”

“Yeah, no shit,” said Ezra, confusion and anger spiking again all at once. “Like Lothal.”

“ _Not_ like Lothal,” Thrawn snapped. “We are not discussing mild economic hardship, high unemployment levels or uncomfortable levels of military presence, Commander Bridger. Koja faced an inevitable planet-wide famine; the psychological makeup of the Kojai people would almost certainly lead to stand-offs between their native ethnic groups and economic classes, escalating to massacres, and finally to genocide at the hands of any invading force. What Koja needed was to remain safely off the Imperial star charts, and as I could not hide the memory of it from him, the only way to do that was to convince Emperor Palpatine it was destroyed.”

Ezra kept his head in his hands, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Commodore Faro worked closely with me on Koja,” Thrawn said, his voice quieter now. “She was one of very few crew members aboard the _Chimaera_ who understood the planet’s options. She was also my second-in-command; I knew that if I convinced her of Koja’s destruction — even if only for a moment — the severity of her reaction and my response to it would cement the memory at the forefront of my mind, in an optimal position for Palpatine to discover. He did not see the memories before it or the memories which came after; those I translated into a code and buried as deeply as I could.”

A code — suddenly, Ezra remembered a part of that memory he’d almost forgotten, a throwaway line that loaned credence to Thrawn’s claim.

“You have a brother,” he said slowly, looking up from the fire. Thrawn met his gaze and held it, his eyes cold. “You have a brother, and the two of you made up that code together when you were kids,” Ezra said, eyebrows furrowed. “Is that right? You thought about it in the memory, but it was so fast, I…”

“You learned of the existence of a code, but did not apply this knowledge to the scenario at hand?” Thrawn asked.

“You made it up when you were a _kid_ ,” Ezra repeated, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Why would I think that was relevant? How the hell would I know a code made up by a bunch of kids would work against a _Sith_ _lord_?”

“A code in my native language,” Thrawn reminded him. “A language which the Emperor does not speak and has only encountered in my own mind.”

It was all too much, Ezra thought. He kept his head angled down, rubbing ceaselessly at his tired, itching eyes. He was no longer really processing anything Thrawn said, just letting it wash over him; he was too exhausted by the onslaught of information and emotions to take any of it in.

“I should’ve known you’d do something like that,” he said. When Thrawn stayed silent, Ezra continued, refusing to look up. “Trick the Emperor. Plant memories, use code. You know nobody else in the whole universe would be ballsy enough to try that, right?”

“Few would, perhaps,” said Thrawn. His eyes were narrowed. “Any full Jedi Knight should know about the technique, either through training or through his own experiments with mind-reading.”

Era scoffed; it came out sounding weak and weary. “Well, sorry,” he said. “We can’t all be all-knowing like you.”

The look Thrawn gave him was withering — but his posture deflated suddenly and when he spoke, his voice sounded almost disappointed. “We would not be here if I were all-knowing,” he said. He came closer to the fire, sitting down heavily on the same log Ezra had pushed him off of earlier. “If I were all-knowing,” said Thrawn, “I would not have come to the Empire at all.”

Ezra eyed him warily. He couldn’t be sure how much to trust — which of Thrawn’s actions were real and which, like his memory of Commodore Faro, were engineered or otherwise manufactured. But if he could just take a quick peek into Thrawn’s mind…

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Let me try something,” he said.

Now it was Thrawn’s turn to eye him warily. Ezra opened himself up to the Force, reaching out tentatively to Thrawn’s mind — and for the first time to date, found an impenetrable wall there waiting for him. It felt like he had reached through an open window only for someone to slam the glass down on his fingertips.

“You must have forgotten,” Thrawn said evenly, his eyes searing into Ezra’s. Slowly, he rolled up his dirt-stained sleeves, revealing the fresh cut on his forearm again. It was thin but long, the edges of it jagged and torn. “I agreed to be your test subject because I was reasonably sure it would not cause me immediate harm. That agreement no longer stands.”

“ _Seriously_?” Ezra said. The cut couldn’t be more than a few inches long; it wasn’t even bleeding anymore. “Because of that cut?” He squinted at the other scratch, the one right beneath Thrawn’s eye. “Or is it because of that one?”

“Not even because of the excruciating pain which _caused_ this cut,” Thrawn said, tapping the small wound on his forearm. “When you accessed my memory of the Koja incident, it triggered pain so intense I temporarily lost consciousness. I was prepared for the eventuality of physical pain, although I did not believe it would ever progress to such a level; I was not prepared for the subsequent escalation to conscious, deliberate use of the Force…” 

Thrawn’s left hand came up, fingers circling lightly around his own neck in a gesture that seemed almost subconscious, as though he were soothing a bruise that was no longer there.

“...to cause physical harm,” he finished, his voice hushed.

Ezra’s mouth was dry. After a long moment, Thrawn let his hand drop; his eyes flickered up to meet Ezra’s.

“Using the Light Side means using the Force to help others and foster peace,” he said. “Dark Side users seem more powerful because they tap into their negative emotions, embracing their hatred of the enemy rather than pushing through it — do you remember saying that, Commander? I’m paraphrasing, of course.”

He watched Ezra, waiting for an answer, but Ezra couldn’t think of anything to say. His chest felt hollow, like his heart had sunk deep into his rib cage and disappeared.

“You also said ‘some things are just bad,’” Thrawn reminded him. “That one is a direct quote. How would you classify your actions today?”

When Ezra still didn’t answer, he said, “Would you agree I am justified in blocking an uncontrolled and unstable Force-user from accessing my mind?”

He was deliberately provoking Ezra just like he’d provoked Commodore Faro, and Ezra knew it, but he didn’t feel any of the irritation or defensiveness he normally would. He sat back, more exhausted than he’d been since the day they crash-landed on this planet, and sighed through his nose.

Thrawn watched him, quietly waiting for a response. In the ensuing silence, Ezra bit the inside of his cheek, his thoughts tracking back over every little thing that had gone wrong today. He tried to pretend Thrawn wasn’t staring at him, tried to ignore the feeling that he was being observed like a specimen in a lab, but eventually he couldn’t take it any longer and he looked up, meeting Thrawn’s eyes.

“It was my fault for pushing you with the Force,” Ezra said firmly. Thrawn blinked, but it wasn’t a startled blink; his face conveyed no emotion at all. “I know that; I can admit it was wrong. And _you_ can admit that — well, what I did, it’s understandable. Isn’t it? Not justified, but understandable. After what I saw in your memories, about Koja — and with you refusing to talk about it or explain _anything_ — any reasonable person would react the same way.”

Still, Thrawn said nothing. He didn’t accept Ezra’s claim, but he didn’t reject it, either. With a deep breath, Ezra plunged on into the next part.

“What I don’t understand is the mind-reading thing,” he said heavily. “It’s never hurt you before today — not when _I_ did it, I mean — and even today, it didn’t hurt you at all until we got to the memory with Palpatine, right?”

Thrawn simply sat there with his elbows propped on his knees, staring contemplatively at Ezra.

“So how do we know it was _me_ who caused the pain?” Ezra pressed. “I mean, how do we know it didn’t just come from the memory? Because Palpatine caused you a lot of pain, too, right? Maybe the _memory_ of the pain was—”

“—somehow stronger than the original sensation?” Thrawn finished. A small line had appeared between his eyebrows; Ezra couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or if he was really considering it.

“It’s got to at least be _connected_ , right?” he said hopelessly.

Across from him, Thrawn scrubbed at his face, exhibiting some of the same weariness Ezra was feeling.

“I believe,” he said eventually, “the pain from that particular memory may have amplified some of the physical sensations caused by your … one-sided foray into a deeper layer of my mind. That was not a memory I prepared for your viewing; when you broke through to it, I felt a sharp pain here—” He gestured to his temple. “—which only grew as the memory continued.”

Relief washed over Ezra, even if this was only a small victory — even if he had still used the Force to attack Thrawn, even if they were technically stranded here because of him, even if the people on the _Chimaera_ might have made it if—

Well, it was a victory. He found his eyes locked on Thrawn’s, both of them surveying each other with a kind of exhausted embarrassment.

“Why did you wish to access my mind?” Thrawn asked.

“Hey, this whole thing was _your_ idea,” Ezra said.

“No — just now, when I blocked you. What did you hope to achieve?”

“Oh.” Ezra blinked; although it had only been minutes, it felt like a lifetime ago since Thrawn blocked him. He rubbed his eyes, working back through each agonizing point in the conversation until he remembered his own motivations. “I thought maybe you were lying to me — about Koja, I mean. I wanted to … well, I thought maybe if I connected to your mind and I asked you some simple questions — stuff like ‘what is your name’ and all that — I could figure out how to tell when you were lying. And then I would know if you really destroyed that planet or not.”

Thrawn was silent for a moment, absorbing this information.

“I’ve never been stranded with someone who thought me capable of destroying a planet before,” he said eventually.

Ezra was reasonably sure Thrawn had never been stranded with _anyone_ before, but he didn’t say so out loud.

“Typically,” Thrawn continued, scratching absently at the cut on his arm, “the worst I’m accused of is making a few fortunate guesses and passing them off as tactical skill.”

Ezra decided not to voice his opinion on that, either. Thrawn glanced at him speculatively, perhaps growing suspicious of the silence. He tugged his sleeves down again, covering the light wound, and crossed his arms over his abdomen as he leaned closer to the fire.

They said nothing for a long time after that, both of them allowing the silence to continue. As he listened to the fire pop and the birds sing, Ezra felt the tension slowly draining out of him. It lulled him into a sense of almost-normalcy, made the events of the last hour or two seem over-dramatic and silly. 

After ten minutes of silence, Thrawn stood, piling more logs onto the fire. When he took his seat again, Ezra sat up, somehow knowing — as if by instinct — that the mood had shifted enough for them to start again. 

“I would like to test a theory,” Thrawn said, his eyes slipping closed.

“Okay…” said Ezra. 

“I would like you,” said Thrawn slowly, “to connect with my mind, but do not attempt to read it. Simply make the connection and maintain it. Can you do that?”

Ezra reached out with the Force, making the connection swiftly and easily. “Already done,” he said. “Your block is gone.”

 _Obviously,_ Thrawn thought in Basic.

Aloud, he said, “What makes you happy?”

The question came out of nowhere. Ezra was so thrown by it that it ruined his concentration; he almost lost the connection right then and there. He stared at Thrawn, thinking for a moment he might have heard him wrong.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Vaguely, Thrawn gestured at the woods around them. “Think of something you enjoy, something which makes you feel content,” he said. “Birdsong; the sound of the river; sunrise; the scent of wildflowers; those peculiarly long naps you take at mid-day…”

“You have absolutely no grasp on who I am as a person, do you?” said Ezra, somewhat baffled by Thrawn’s list. “I mean, seriously — wildflowers and birdsong? Have you never been _flying?_ ”

“Flying, then,” said Thrawn with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Imagine flying.”

“Do you _not_ like flying?” 

“Do you not like sleeping for egregiously long periods during the day?” Thrawn shot back.

“Fine, fine,” Ezra groused. He closed his mind, imagined his first time on a speeder — the warmth of sunlight reflecting off the transparisteel, the wind pushing his hair back from his forehead, the images streaking by so quickly he could barely make them out. Gradually, he felt himself relax, his muscles feeling lighter and less exhausted, some of the tension leaking from his face.

And then, abruptly, he caught a sense of something else, something that didn't come from him: a dull tremor hidden deep beneath the unending cycle of thoughts and ciphers that was Thrawn’s brain — a feeling like sand shifting unexpectedly beneath his feet, like a sudden and deafening noise waking him with a jolt in the middle of the night, like the wary flinch of a mistreated animal when someone raises their hand to pet it.

“Fear,” Ezra breathed, opening his eyes. Thrawn watched him from across the fire, saying nothing, his face giving nothing away. “Fear of … the Force?” Ezra guessed, unable to make sense of the readings. “Of me?”

“Look closer,” Thrawn said. 

With a slow sigh, Ezra immersed himself again. It all somehow stemmed from his own memory of flying a speeder for the first time; he called that to mind again, letting the memory consume him — the wind whipping against him and forcing water from his eyes, the smile he couldn’t wipe off his face, his dad letting him choose which path they took, taking them through the wild plains of Lothal. 

And the more he thought about that moment, _his_ moment, the more clear Thrawn’s mind, so opposite to his own, became. Deep within it all, hidden behind a web of ciphers that now seemed as insubstantial as fine gauze, was a cold blue nexus not much different from the color of Thrawn’s skin. It was like a heart at the center of his mind, and it was from this nexus that the chill feeling of fear was emanating.

He didn't want to go anywhere near it _—_ but if he wanted to make any progress here, he had no choice. Ezra allowed his mind to wrap around it, absorbing everything he could:

He’s curled up tightly in an alcove in the cave wall, hidden away from prying eyes. The adults can’t fit into small spaces like this and don’t have the athletic ability to climb so high anyway, so they never think to look for him here. If he’s quick about this — if he makes it back to the tech lab in time — they’ll never notice the questis is missing.

He keys in the reception code for Vuras’s base on Copero and watches with anxiety as the display flickers, sizzles uselessly. He keys it in again, adjusting the parameters, working off instinct and half-guessing at everything he does. He's never used one of these before. He’d promised he’d be able to figure it out on his own; if this doesn’t work, Vuras will never let him hear the end of it.

Then the display solidifies and an image appears, making his heart jump. Vuras, no older than twelve, stands in front of the lens, aiming a hovering camera (they don’t have anything that new in the tech lab here, Thrawn notes with a pang) so that it catches the wide smile on his face.

 _You’ll never believe this,_ he says without preamble. He hadn’t doubted for a second that Thrawn would get the projector to work; Thrawn can tell. _They have all sorts of plants here, Vurawn. Not just edible or medicinal plants, either. They just grow wild all over the surface, not just in the greenhouses — on the_ surface _! And they have these things — you’d love them, I swear — well, here. Just take a look._

The camera flickers as Vuras turns it around. The lens focuses, revealing something that makes Thrawn’s breath catch in his throat. It’s a plant, but unlike anything he’s ever seen before, not in the Great Family greenhouses and certainly not growing on the cave walls. Colorful blossoms gather at the end of the stem, each one a vibrant shade of yellow — the type he’s only seen in paintings and unnatural dyes. 

The camera twists back to Vuras, but Thrawn still hasn’t caught his breath.

 _Everyone says that only peasants gawk at the flowers,_ Vuras says, still smiling. _Well, actually, they say these are technically weeds, not flowers. But I don’t care. They can think whatever they want of me — I’m going to see if I can figure out a way to send you one._

The memory seemed to dissolve around Ezra; he had a sensation like he was slipping out of the alcove and falling an impossible distance — hundreds upon hundreds of feet — and suddenly another scene was forming up in front of his eyes. 

_They call themselves the Grysks,_ Thrawn says. The noise of Darth Vader’s ventilator fills the room, so mechanically timed that it gives nothing of Vader’s mental state away; Commodore Faro stares at Thrawn, her face pinched with tension; it’s clear from the tightness of her jaw that her instincts scream at her to look out the viewport at the strange cylinder floating there, but she forces herself to hold still. 

_Their methods are particularly cruel,_ Thrawn says. _They have a way to brainwash their victims so completely as to make them into wholehearted slaves — not mindless, but willing to sacrifice themselves or even their families in order to protect the Grysks._

The scene warped and twisted before Ezra could get a proper hold on it, catapulting him into another memory:

He is uncomfortable, perhaps even awkward, in civilian clothes. It doesn’t matter that these are old and patched and familiar clothes rescued from his parents’ home before it was allocated to another commoner with a family of his own; the smell of his father’s pipe is still attached to the tunic he wears, and in a sense that gives him a certain amount of strength. But the fit is wrong, and it has been so long since he last wore civilian clothes, and he can’t help but feel ill at ease.

He isn’t used to seeing _her_ in civvies, either. He sits sideways on the torn leather seat of a parked one-person speeder deep in the tunnels of Csilla, far from the prying eyes of the Nine Ruling Families. 

And Ar’alani stands across from him, her arms crossed, tension radiating from her face.

 _You understand,_ she says, _that if you take this mission you may never come back?_

 _That is true of every mission,_ Thrawn says. If possible, her lips seem to tighten even more at this; his words do nothing to comfort her. She is agitated, full of nervous energy, eager to fly into battle herself.

 _I estimate the exile will last no longer than three months; the mission itself, perhaps a year,_ Thrawn says. When she only glares at him, her eyes still hard, he tries to reassure her. _It’s a simple reconnaissance mission, nothing more._

 _It’s never a simple mission with you,_ Ar’alani says.

The bitterness in her voice steals anything else he might have said. He has one hand on the speeder’s handlebar, the old leather wrap rough against his palm. He stares down at it, fingers tightening anxiously around the grip; if Ar’alani notices this, it could give him away — but she’s staring him down, waiting for him to answer her, an all-too-familiar challenging look on her face.

 _We need allies,_ he says softly. _We cannot protect our people without allies._

He does not meet her eyes. 

With a resounding, ear-shattering explosion, the memory shifted again. The ground shakes; five meters ahead of him, the cave wall collapses with a roar, filling the tunnel with wood and mortar. A child from the upper-class residences above falls through at the same time, landing bonelessly in the debris; broken water pipes gush from the walls, spraying their contents onto the tunnel floor. 

None of the adults seem to see her fall or hear the crack of her skull against the floor. He's the only one who reacts to it. He runs to the child without thinking, dodging the adults’ legs as they hurry by, and falls to his knees beside her. He feels his trousers tear, the skin scraping off his knees where he hits the ground and cold water seeping into his clothes, but he barely registers it.

With small, steady hands, he checks her pulse — she’s older than him perhaps by a year and clad in the prefab robes of a palace worker — like one of his cousins — but she won’t open her eyes; he can’t feel her heartbeat at all; she’s dead — and then someone grabs him roughly by the shoulder and pulls him away.

Whoever it is, they let go and run off before Thrawn properly catches his feet, leaving him staggering in the crowd. A man races by, so panicked that he doesn't watch where he's going; his hip strikes Thrawn in the arm, sends him stumbling to his knees in the water again. He makes a quick decision, crawls back to the dead girl’s body. Almost everyone running past unconsciously avoids her and the pile of debris she lies upon; if he stays there for a moment, he won’t be stampeded. His fingers are smashed under the boot of an adolescent trying to beat the crowd, but it’s the only injury he receives, and it’s easy to shake the pain away. Now posted near the dead girl’s body, he takes in the situation, filtering out the noise of panic so he can take in the data he needs — figure out what’s going on — survive. Shivers wrack him, an unstoppable mix of fear and adrenaline and water so cold it’s close to freezing.

The tunnels are flooded with Chiss, all of them in peasant clothes like his, all of them fleeing. There are no outsiders that he can see; if this is an attack, either it was perpetrated by one of their own or the attacker has not yet entered the tunnel. If Thrawn runs with them — adults, mostly — he runs the risk of getting trampled, maybe even drowning if he is trapped face-down. He notes the broken skin on his right hand where he was stepped on, the blood pouring out of relatively small wounds thanks to the water, which keeps it from congealing and has a diluting effect. He can feel a broken bone in one of his fingers, the pain sharp but not the worst he’s ever experienced. He’s broken bones before through daily chores, just like every other child in this settlement; he can deal with something as small as that.

But if he stays here, right here, he runs the risk of being crushed in another collapse. He cranes his neck, spots straining rafters and broken struts above him. This girl comes from an upper-level; the levels even higher up, the ones above her, are not secure. Glancing at the crowd, he finds it thinner, navigable but still not safe.

So he climbs to his feet and darts eastward, away from the commotion, away from the polished cave systems carved out by a thousand generations of Chiss. He runs for the rough, natural line to the surface, a narrow crack in the cave system traversed only by children — and only the most adventurous ones at that; it will be cold, especially with the floodwater already soaking through his clothes, but it’s sturdier than the wood structures collapsing all around him, and he can wait there until the ground stops shaking and the explosions subside. The cave structure ensures that explosions will only cause this particular crack to widen; he has the unique seismic plates of a gigantic iceberg to thank for that.

He slips between the walls, coming to a stop not ten meters in. There’s no chance of finding his family in this mess; the elders are at work in the mines, his cousins each old enough to be at their separate apprenticeships or training yards. 

Still, some unknowable instinct — morbid curiosity — draws him back to the entrance, and he can’t help but glance over his shoulder at the mob. At the mouth of the narrow tunnel, an elderly neighbor — a schoolteacher named Hass’atha’nuroc — has stopped running, facing the oncoming crowd with eerie stillness. His face is set, his eyes dull; somehow Thrawn gets the impression that this is Hass'atha'nuroc's body, but not Hass'atha'nuroc's mind. The schoolteacher holds his arms out — beckoning, Thrawn knows, for his daughter and grandson, a boy not much younger than Vuras; a slow runner, a confused mind, the type who would get left behind easily.

But when the boy reaches Hass’atha’nuroc, the old man doesn’t embrace him. He pulls a vibroblade from his tunic and holds it loosely, like he's showing it off to his grandson. He slits the child’s throat. The movement is matter-of-fact, a simple, blunt sweep of the knife with none of the flourish Thrawn’s seen before in cadets practicing combat outside the academy. For a moment, it’s so unlike anything else he’s ever seen that he thinks it can’t be real — but the boy’s body slumps to the ground, lifeless, dead weight. The mother, too startled to flee, dies next.

Thrawn presses into a minute crevice in the cave walls, hiding himself from sight, hands clasped tightly over his mouth. He sinks his teeth into his broken finger, squinching his eyes shut through the bolt of agony that shoots through him, letting the pain wipe his thoughts away and calm his mind. From here, if he crouches down and peers through a crack in the stone, he can see Hass’atha’nuroc abandoning the bodies of his daughter and grandson, his vibroblade held before him as he searches — no, Thrawn knows the look in Hass’atha’nuroc’s eyes. He isn’t searching. He’s _hunting_. 

His heart pounds, but to run now would be stupid, maybe fatally so ( _fatally stupid,_ part of his mind echoes; that’s Hass’atha’nuroc’s phrase, that’s how he describes some of the other children at school). He takes a deep breath and squeezes the broken bone, then blinks through the tears of mixed panic and pain until his vision is clear. When he can see that Hass’atha’nuroc is far away, with his back turned to the ancient tunnel and his vision blocked by the pushing and shoving crowd, Thrawn hurries over to the entrance and bends down, furtively examining the bodies. They lay directly beneath a broken pipe, cold water spraying down on top of them, soaking their clothes, their hair. None of the adults have bothered to check on them. The older boy’s eyes are open, his throat gaping and still bleeding, his skin still warm — but he is undeniably dead, and so is his mother. 

Carefully, surreptitiously, Thrawn moves them away from the pipe, but he’s too small to haul them completely out of the water. It’s shameful to leave them; he doesn’t have much choice. Before he goes, he scrabbles forward across the wet floor, shuts their eyes quickly but with gentle fingers, and tilts their faces to face north — when he glances up, he’s just in time to see a group of his uncle’s colleagues subduing Hass’atha’nuroc, taking him to the ground. One of them holds the vibroblade away from his body, his disgust evident from the curl of his lip.

The men are competent, but too focused on the task at hand. Thrawn’s eyes track farther down the corridor, taking in more data than the others can see. He sees a woman he doesn’t know by name stop in the middle of the stampede, her face blank and eerily calm; she turns to face her fellow Chiss head-on and removes a blaster from her robes.

The ground stabilized; the dim light of the cave system turned to static and grew brighter. Ezra blinked, taking a moment to get his bearings, and found himself somewhere horribly familiar: the command room of the _Chimaera_ , staring at the blue lines of a holomap.

The room is silent, filled only by the click-whir of the projector. He leans close to Commodore Faro, both of them huddled around the holodeck, and points to a node in the map near Coruscant, marked red. 

_We’ve tracked them this far,_ he says. 

The color drains from Faro’s face. She purses her lips, eyes darting rapidly over the holomap. _We don’t know how long they’ve been here?_ she asks.

_No._

_But if they’ve made it that close to Coruscant…_ She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. She’s watching him now, looking at him the same way she does in the middle of a battle when he gives an order she doesn’t fully understand — doubtful, perhaps a little anxious, but thoughtful and trusting. Waiting for him to tell her the plan, already lining up her own adjustments and suggestions to perfect it.

But can he trust her? He switches the holomap off, pulls away from the deck. He respects Faro; he knows she is a competent, fair leader, above average in applying both the scientific process and her tactical skills to any issue at hand, with a strong sense of honor and a streak of independence. But she is older and more experienced than Vanto — more similar to Ar’alani than to Car’das — and he cannot predict her reactions with perfect certainty; can he trust _anyone_ if he doesn’t know how they might act?

He retraces his steps back to his desk and takes a seat, folding his arms on the desktop with his shoulders hunched — a move both genuine and calculated, letting some of his exhaustion show. He can see from the way Faro’s eyes flicker that she notices; that it catches her off-guard.

Good.

 _Tell me what you know about the Grysks,_ Thrawn says.

The borders shifted again; this time, Ezra felt as if he were shunted sideways, removed from the _Chimaera_ and hurtled through space and time. 

He’s been waiting in the shuttleport for hours, sitting quietly and unobtrusively in the corner, unnoticed by the adults passing through. He wears the uniform of a senior school candidate, taken from a common pool of clothing used for students of all sizes — the cloth is thin from many years of rough use and rougher washings, the fit too big for his frame, perhaps meant for a boy one or two years older than he is — and he’s being very careful not to tear the cuffed sleeves or smudge dirt from the station on his trouser legs.

The thick coat he wears over the uniform is the only thing keeping him warm as he waits, and even with that, he shivers. He sits with his feet up on the bench, his knees hugged close to his chest and his hands clasped loosely around them. He hasn’t had anything to eat or drink today, too anxious to even think about it — and there is a certain sharpness which hunger and thirst lend to his mind, a sharpness which ensures he’ll remember everything about today a little clearer. His stomach is a hard stone pit, shrunken and heavy all at once, and his eyes are glued to the shuttles coming in. When he sees the sleek design of a Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet, his breath catches in his throat; his fingers tighten around each other, numb and pale from the cold. 

The hatch hisses open and Thrawn stumbles to his feet, watching each and every person who comes out. The officers and enlisted men who exit first are too tall, too old, and his eyes pass over them without a second thought, scarcely registering their features or ranks. 

Then — wearing civilian clothes and taking up the rear — his older brother leaves the shuttle and steps foot back on Ascendancy ground. His eyes sweep the port, searching for familiar faces, but Thrawn is moving too fast for him; by the time Vuras catches sight of him, Thrawn is only a few steps away.

He smiles so widely it hurts his cheeks; Vuras smiles, too. He clasps his younger brother by the forearm, simultaneously embracing him and pulling him away from the open dock. His first few words of greeting are lost in the deafening noise of another arriving shuttle.

 _—the uniform of the Mitth family?_ Vuras asks. _Or just a candidacy uniform?_

Still smiling, feeling almost stupid with happiness, Thrawn says, _They’re considering me for adoption. They’re considering you, too. Didn’t you get the notice?_

He can tell by the look in his eyes that Vuras has known for a while, that he only kept it a secret in case Thrawn had not been invited, too. He leads Thrawn farther from the dock, to the quieter, less-crowded tunnels behind the bay. They are still being reconstructed from the attack years ago.

 _I suppose I’ll have to call you Thrass now,_ Thrawn says, eyeing Vuras contemplatively. _Everyone’s already calling me Thrawn._ He can hear the shy mixture of embarrassment and pride in his own voice, and it just embarrasses him more. It's not his fault; he feels awkward around his brother, like meeting a stranger he's always admired, even though they've spoken hundreds of times over voice call since Vuras left. He feels jittery, eager to please.

 _You’ll get used to it,_ Vuras assures him. _And anyway, it’s not until I muster out._

Thrawn takes a gamble. His words will either amuse Vuras — if Vuras hasn't changed — or anger him.

 _Which will be any day now, right?_ he says. _Because your Sight is failing?_

The look Vuras gives him is withering but not serious; Thrawn gracefully dodges a cuff to the head, hiding his smile, and when he retraces his steps to stand by his brother’s side, Vuras does not try to hit him again. The sense of nervousness fades away; Vuras hasn't changed. By silent mutual agreement, they turn down the crumbling southeast tunnel, walking along the pedestrian paths in the direction of their childhood home. The neighborhood has been altered enormously since Vuras last visited; he takes it in without a word, his eyes glazed and far away, and Thrawn is tactful enough to stay quiet as they walk. Inside, he’s burning with questions, desperate to know more about the life of an _ozyly-esehembo_ , about the daily minutiae of life on a military ship — about missions Vuras has been on, secrets he hasn't been able to tell Thrawn over the holo. 

But he holds it all in. He’s had years to process the attack on their homeworld; Vuras has been away, is possibly comprehending the full extent of damage for the very first time.

Thrawn only hopes he won’t ask about their mother. He hears Vuras inhale deeply and slows his pace in response, suddenly certain the dreaded question is about to come. He casts about for something else to say, a reasonable topic to distract Vuras from the attack, but Vuras beats him to it.

 _I have something for you,_ he says, coming to a stop. Thrawn turns to face him, stepping out of the way of an upper-class commoner bustling by. He watches, wide-eyed and somber, as Vuras bends his head and reaches up, deftly undoing the knot on a leather cord tied around his neck.

Carefully, he slips the necklace out from under his jacket, holding it out for Thrawn to see. It’s simple and rustic, the pendant beaten from a piece of tarnished metal, perhaps durasteel, by inexperienced hands. Hands smaller than Vuras’s are now, Thrawn notices; he guesses Vuras must have made it when he was no older than seven. There are no engravings, crude or otherwise, and no symbols carved into the surface — it’s only a flat, somewhat uneven pendant on an unassuming leather string.

Tentatively, Thrawn holds out his hand and Vuras lowers the pendant into his palm. It’s warm to the touch, warmer than it should be; so warm that the temperature against Thrawn’s freezing hands throws him into a sort of shock and wracks his body with renewed shivers — and as he stares at it, it seems to give off a silver-blue flash of color, like a quick and subtle glow.

A sense of alien calm engulfs Thrawn — a sense of comfort. Dimly, so vaguely he can’t be sure it’s real, he thinks he can smell the spicy, herbal smoke from his father’s pipe, thinks he can hear his mother’s clipped, quick voice as she walks him through the steps to work the mining drill on his own — her hands guiding his hands, her skin cool and chapped. He screws up his face, ears perked, trying to make out the words — to confirm what he’s hearing — but the sounds of the station flood in and drown his mother out.

When he looks back up at Vuras, searching for answers, his brother is watching him with a sad smile.

 _It’s called an_ oth’ola endzali _,_ he says. _It’s something we all do right after we leave home, when we’re really little._ _You make a pendant out of scrap metal, or you can make it from wood if you want, and you imbue it with the Sight. It’s like a beacon; it always leads home._

_A beacon?_ Thrawn asks. 

_Like a wayfinder,_ Vuras says. Thrawn’s nose wrinkles.

_That’s not very good for operational security…._

Vuras barks out a short laugh, cutting it off just so he can roll his eyes. _You’re gonna be the most obnoxious officer in the galaxy when you grow up,_ he says. _You sound like Ziara._

 _I do not,_ Thrawn protests. He ties the pendant around his neck, ducking his head so Vuras can tighten the knot for him, his own fingers still too cold and clumsy to do the trick. _How do you imbue it with the Sight like that?_ he asks, touching the pendant gently, reverently. It rests a little below his clavicles, close to his heart.

 _It’s complicated,_ Vuras says.

Complicated? Surely he doesn’t mean that Thrawn won't understand the details; there must be military secrets involved. Thrawn stares at him, waiting for the explanation, censored though it might be. Eventually, Vuras laughs and gestures for them to continue home. When Thrawn starts walking again, still clutching the peculiar little pendant, Vuras says,

_I forgot what it’s like talking to you._

Thrawn frowns at that. _What do you mean?_

But Vuras just shakes his head, pointing to the pendant around Thrawn’s neck.

 _I’ll tell you how it’s made. It’s like there are little atoms and other particles inside the metal,_ he says. _And if you concentrate really hard — you have to be young to do this, when the Sight is really strong — you can open up this sort of link between yourself and the atoms, and then you can channel anything you want into them. So you just open yourself up as much as you can, mentally, and you think of home and all the things you love about it, all the stuff you remember … and there it is._

 _And one of the things you love is Mother teaching me how to use the drill?_ says Thrawn, aghast.

 _Well, it connects to your memories, too, now that you’re wearing it,_ says Vuras. _So I guess_ you’re _the one who loves the drill. Maybe you’ll be a miner instead of a soldier; Dad would like that._

Thrawn shoves him, but Vuras just laughs. They walk together in comfortable silence after that, the pendant suffusing Thrawn with a warm glow, a feeling of content that stems his usual propensity for talkativeness and non-stop questions; it greases the wheels inside his head in a pleasant way, slowing down the extraneous stimuli and observations he can never seem to turn off, allowing him to focus entirely on what seems most important right now, without other curiosities and concepts budging in. This is a new experience for him; he feels slower yet sharper all at once. His steps seem somehow lighter and swifter with the pendant around his neck — perhaps because, like Vuras said, it’s a beacon leading him home, assisting him in ways he can’t even comprehend.

They pass the section of repaired tunnels where the bodies were found. Thrawn’s throat tightens; he glances at Vuras to see if he knows, sees the furrowed line of his brother’s eyebrows, the clouded quality of his eyes. If he doesn’t already know, he’s quickly figuring it out. Perhaps he knows because of minute changes in Thrawn’s posture or expression; perhaps the location was described by whichever military officer broke the news to him years ago.

Silently, unobtrusively, Thrawn slips his left hand into his brother’s, feels large fingers closing around his own in a gesture that’s been unfamiliar to him for years. It feels strange and awkward now, like he’s outgrown this, like the time has passed. But he doesn’t let go.

He keeps his other hand clenched tightly around the pendant as they walk by. 

The time shifted; the location did not. He’s smaller again, wearing the homespun clothes his elders helped him make at the beginning of the year. Blood has dried on his hands from where he tended to the bodies of Hass’atha’nuroc’s daughter and grandchild, staining the gold trim on his sleeves; his sense of hearing has been affected by the explosions, leaving every sound around him distant and dull. All he can be sure of is the ache from his trampled, broken hand.

His adrenaline is fading, leaving him cold, making him feel younger than his six years. At this age, he tells himself, Vuras had already left to serve the Fleet. At this age, perhaps Vuras had already seen plenty of dead bodies, already killed someone himself. His concept of military service — and the duties of an _ozyly-esehembo_ — are vague but suffused with natural respect, and he can imagine Vuras handling this gracefully and with all the maturity of an adult, and imagining that helps him achieve some sense of maturity himself.

He forces himself to approach the bodies. The Chiss who killed them are gone; some of them lay dead amongst their victims, slain by other adults even as they attempted to do more harm — but there are no other living beings in sight, not here, not anywhere in the neighborhood. It seems almost like all the surviving adults received some signal, some communication Thrawn missed, and they’ve all amassed somewhere else. In reality, he suspects they simply panicked, and that he did not, and that’s why they are gone and he remains — but his brain stutters when he tries to comprehend this; all his life, he’s been told adults don’t panic, and children do. Up until now, the evidence he’s seen has tended that way as well — outside his family, where Mother panics slightly when the drill isn’t working and Father panics when work runs dry, but Thrawn never panics at all.

He steps over the corpses of men and women — children, classmates — he knows, always stooping to check for signs of breathing and a pulse, his shoes coming down in cold, stagnant water that soaks right through the soft leather and bites at his skin.

The bodies in the center of the tunnel are the worst. He busies himself far away from them, where the water is only a few centimeters deep, tending to the body of a girl he knew. With his uninjured hand, he tilts her head to the north and refuses to look at the other corpses, the truly terrible ones. He can hear his own breathing in his ears, harsh and shallow. Maybe he _is_ panicking. Maybe he just doesn’t know it yet.

It takes him hours to examine each body — that’s what it feels like, and he can’t convince himself it isn’t true. His vision blurs, each dead Chiss melding with the next; he can’t seem to force himself to absorb details the way he always does; some protective measure in his brain deflects it all automatically, against his will. The water grows deeper and darker until it’s all just a whir of sticky blood, of his fingers pressed against the pulse point on a dead man’s neck, of gaping wounds and dim, staring eyes.

By the time he examines each of the outlying bodies, he can no longer avoid looking at the decomposing corpses in the center. They’re the closest to this level’s heat source; they’ve been lying there for more than a day, boiling in water from broken pipes, disregarded by the few upper-level authorities who patrol through in the hunt for surviving enemies. 

For the first time in what feels like days, Thrawn straightens his back, keeping his injured hand cradled to his chest. He walks through these corpses without stooping; he’s no longer searching for signs of life. Not among these Chiss. He studies the blackened, bloated faces instead, the ruptured skin, the organs spilling out. Each step comes with a small splash, the water eating its way up his trouser legs until he’s wet from the knee down. Soft films of sloughed skin float over the water’s surface, sticking to his clothes as he pushes through.

He notes the small, dull blue beetles — carrion-eaters who crawl out from their crevices in the cave walls only when something has been killed nearby — as they pick their way slowly, leisurely, over the dead. There are deep pits and long, thin tunnels in each corpse’s flesh where beetles have fed on them; there are broken, mashed jawlines on children who were beaten to death with hammers; there are bloated necks that blossom out like hideous mushrooms over the thin monofilament lines which strangled them.

His eyes rove over one of the strangulation victims; the face has bloated to the point of rupture, the woman’s face blossoming outward and leaving no trace behind of her nose or eyes; he can make out the jagged, blood-stained edges of her teeth in the seeping, blackened hole that used to be her face. He follows the evidence to the source — the clothesline wrapped tightly around her neck — and sees the tips of clawed, discolored fingers frozen in place where the woman tried to fight her way free.

Something stops him here, glues his eyes to the anonymous, unrecognizable woman lying dead in the heat. He crouches beside her, feeling through the black water until he finds her soft, rotting hand. Some of the flesh comes away beneath his fingers, but he lifts it out of the water and clutches it, turning it to face the light.

It’s then that he sees the golden trim embroidered on her sleeves and realizes he’s looking at his mother. 

He stumbles back with a splash, the strength suddenly disappearing from his legs, the breath going out of him. His heel strikes something and he tilts backward, unable to stop himself before he falls onto the putrefying corpse behind him. Water engulfs him, filling his nose and mouth with a burning sensation, foreign material catching against his tongue and teeth. His head strikes the hard ground underneath; his foot sinks deep in an open wound on the body beneath him, something thick and wet seeping into his shoe. Vision blurred, head swimming, he struggles free from the water and sits up, staring at the body, at his father’s familiar white-streaked hair — now flecked with red.

When he regains his feet, he can’t force his thoughts to make sense, can’t stop his brain from skipping. Words, sensations, numbers, flavors and scents; it all blends together, it all refuses to coalesce, to tell him what to do. He feels carrion beetles crawling up his leg beneath his water-soaked robes, skittering over his hands from where he struck the floor, small legs picking through his wet hair. Numbly, he shakes them off of him; his teeth are clenched so tightly they feel glued together.

He doesn’t run away. He walks, not stopping until he winds through the tunnels to their family home. His cousins and elders have not returned, and already it feels stale inside, abandoned. 

With one hand, he barricades his parents’ bedroom door. He crawls beneath the bed they shared without changing his clothes or washing the gore off his hands and face, his back against the stone wall, his eyes on the entrance. Deep in the night, he is still awake, mind churning, going back and forth over the attack, over his own actions and the actions of the Chiss who’d turned on their friends and neighbors. He clasps his hands over his knees, squeezing his broken finger at the joint periodically, keeping his head clear. Trying to figure out where he went wrong, what he could have done to fix it.

He’s smart; he has better balance and sense of direction than anyone in his family; he’s faster than the other boys his age and stronger than many of them too. But a child his size might as well be a different species entirely compared to a full-grown Chiss — and an inferior species, at that. His positive traits mean little against an adult, and they mean nothing at all against multiple adults, especially with weapons. But that doesn’t mean a battle against enemies like the ones he saw today would be fruitless; there’s always a way to work things to your advantage, always a way to win.

He needs allies, he decides, staring at the barricaded door. It’s his only chance, maybe the only chance for everyone on Rentor. He needs people bigger and stronger and smarter than himself, and he needs to get bigger and stronger and smarter, too; they need allies with powers they don’t have, fleets amassed from many worlds, millions of soldiers at beck and call. When they figure out what happened today, what caused the attack, what alien force caused good, upstanding Chiss to turn on each other … they will need allies. _He_ will need them. He needs them now.

Those words become an ouroboros in his head, an echo that twists back in on itself in a never-ending cycle: He needs allies. He needs allies. He needs allies.

Days later, when the bodies are cleaned up and the perpetrators dealt with, when he’s set and splinted his broken bone without the help of an adult, he will remember that he did not close his mother’s eyes, did not tilt her head to the north so her spirit could find the sun.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn and Ezra catch some fish.

Ezra lay awake that night, listening to the sounds of insects and nightfowl through the open window of his shelter. It wasn’t that he wasn’t tired — every inch of him was exhausted, every muscle worn out. Even his mind seemed half-asleep already, unable to concentrate on any particular thread, but still stubbornly active. It was like his head had been filled with white noise. 

One word kept emerging from the fog in his brain: _Grysks_. They’d been mentioned or implied more than once in Thrawn’s memories; they were at the nexus of that peculiar knot of fear in Thrawn’s mind. And they were a species Ezra knew next to nothing about, a species he’d never heard of before in his entire life, much like the Chiss.

Staring out the window at the night sky, Ezra thought back over the memories he’d seen — and the structure of Thrawn’s mind, the subtle flickers of emotion he was just learning how to recognize. The fear he’d felt was muted, subdued — low-grade background noise — and when he thought about it now, he believed the fear was centered less on the Grysks and more on a general anxiety, a feeling of frustration and helplessness that Thrawn was here — stranded — and the Chiss were out there, possibly being threatened by any number of unknown species. 

Ezra rubbed his eyes and sighed into his hands. He kept his face covered for a moment, enjoying the utter darkness, the way the world seemed to stand still. When he slid his hands away again, his mind felt just a little bit calmer.

The memories were real, he decided. There was no doubt about that — he could feel the authenticity of them in his bones, as clearly and confidently as he could look at the alphabet and say which letter was Senth and which was Fom. And the memories painted a very stark picture, that was for sure.

But was it the _right_ picture?

The memories he’d seen three days ago were genuine, too; he had no doubt that Thrawn had once walked across a frozen landscape in handmade snowshoes, or that he’d worn animal furs around his shoulders and listened to the hailstones coming down, or that he’d sat in a field of wildflowers when spring came. But while those memories were true, the impression _given_ by those memories — that Thrawn’s home planet was primitive, with absolutely no contemporary technology — was absolutely, undeniably false.

Maybe this was the same thing, Ezra thought, biting his lip. Maybe Thrawn had layered his memories again, deliberately giving Ezra the impression of an enemy force far more powerful and deadly than the Empire. He’d intertwined more recent memories — himself and Faro and their encounters with the Grysks — with older moments from his homeworld, scenes where the influence of the Grysks was implied but never outright stated.

It was entirely possible, Ezra mused, that there were warring factions among the Chiss he simply didn’t know about — _couldn’t_ know about, because Thrawn had neither told nor shown him. In the more recent memories, he’d seen Thrawn as a Grand Admiral discussing the Grysks’ ability to brainwash conquered planets, turning people against their friends and family — and then Thrawn had showed him memories of Chiss attacking Chiss and left Ezra to make his own conclusions. But people killed people all the time, and you didn’t need to be brainwashed to do it.

The strong emotions of the memories seemed convincing, but really they just helped muddy the waters, Ezra realized. He sat up in bed, heart pounding, and looked through his window at Thrawn’s shelter. At some point in the not-so-distant past, Emperor Palpatine had fallen for the same trick; he’d picked through Thrawn’s mind looking for specific information and Thrawn had deflected him, distracted him with a memory full of such genuinely strong emotions that it overrode everything else Palpatine might have seen.

And Thrawn had _admitted_ to doing that — what? Ten minutes, maybe less, before allowing Ezra back into his mind? 

The scene of Thrawn and his older brother (his _Force-sensitive_ older brother? Or was that just another misdirection?) and the pendant which Thrawn still wore — the scene with the Chiss woman, Ar’alani…. Ezra got the sense she was a colleague, a mentor, possibly more; someone Thrawn trusted and cared for as strongly as he cared for his brother. And then the memory at the very end, finding his parents’ bodies rapidly deteriorating after the attack…

Ezra thought of his own parents and winced, swallowing back a sudden, bitter taste of bile on his tongue. He couldn’t imagine many things worse than that; if Thrawn was looking to simultaneously feed Ezra a false conclusion and distract him from the evidence of what he’d done using a cascade of emotionally-charged memories, he couldn’t have picked a more fitting way to end it. 

It seemed too perfectly tailored for the memories — and the order they came in — to be totally organic. But at the same time, Ezra couldn’t think of a single compelling motive for Thrawn to trick him like that. 

He could be testing Ezra, teaching him a lesson about how to read memories and extrapolate information — plausible, because he’d made that same lesson before, but at the same time, it was absolutely ludicrous. If he wanted to teach Ezra a lesson, he could have done so just as easily using mundane memories of events that meant nothing to him — the same way he had before, with the misleading memories of life on a primitive planet.

It could be a malicious mind game — an attempt to convince Ezra that _he_ was the real bad guy here — but there had been no sense of malice in Thrawn’s mind, and if he _did_ want to torture Ezra simply for the fun of it, why would he simultaneously expose his own vulnerabilities? Ezra mulled it over, tentatively dismissing this option … for now. 

It was possible, too, that Thrawn was trying to convince Ezra the Grysks were an imminent threat because — and just thinking this made Ezra huff out an ironic little laugh — he thought it would erase the animosity between himself and Ezra somehow. In a way, this made some sort of rudimentary sense; they were stranded together for the foreseeable future, with the only possible hope for escape being the dim chance of a rescue. Until that happened (and Ezra didn’t hold out much hope that it would), they were stuck with each other — so why not make the stay more pleasant by turning an enemy into an ally?

It seemed like an awfully weak motivation to Ezra; he still couldn’t imagine Thrawn revealing high-stakes memories like that just on the off-chance that it made Ezra more cooperative with chores. With a sigh, Ezra leaned his forearms on the rough window frame, letting the cool night air touch his face.

Eyes closed, working by instinct, he stretched out with the Force. He could see Thrawn’s mind working in the darkness around him; the web of ciphers was still and silent, but faintly — in the background — Ezra could see unknowable letters and numbers shifting methodically, rhythmically, as Thrawn’s subconscious worked through the problems of the day. 

He pulled away again, this time stretching out to the forest, following the quick flickers of movement from the minds of lizards, nightfowl, predators large enough to kill a man. Deep in the woods, he let his mind brush over the cold, dead wreck of the _Chimaera_ and moved into the trees beyond.

And there he stopped. There was nothing there; it was like a sleeping mind without the background sensations that came from subconscious thoughts and dreams. It was like an empty room so vast you couldn’t see the walls.

Or maybe he was sensing _nothing_ , Ezra thought, eyebrows furrowed. 

Maybe there was no life in that side of the forest at all.

* * *

The next day, he woke up before Thrawn — easy, since he hadn’t slept — and stood on the bank of the river with his nose wrinkled, trying to remember how to empty and reset the traps. He’d watched Thrawn build the first one over a month ago, but his own chores had called him away before the rest of the snares and baskets were done; over the ensuing days, by mutual agreement, the traps had become Thrawn’s responsibility and his alone, leaving Ezra with only the vaguest idea what to do.

Or at least, he _thought_ it was by mutual agreement. He remembered that first coherent thought he’d successfully read from Thrawn’s mind — _I don’t enjoy doing this either_ — and how Thrawn had interrogated him over the emotion attached to those words, poking and prodding at Ezra to see what he had found. 

Probably trying to passive-aggressively hint that he should help out more, Ezra thought. He was still standing on the bank contemplating this when Thrawn emerged from his shelter, looking only half-awake and a little bruised around the chest and back, where he’d struck the wooden frame. His eyes shifted away when he saw Ezra standing by the river and he nodded slightly in greeting, but he headed straight for the campfire rather than join Ezra there. He stood near the flames for a long moment, rubbing warmth into his bare arms; the tarnished pendant rested against his collar bone, shining a dull silver-blue in the early morning light. 

Ezra glanced away, scowling down into the clear, unpolluted water. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen Thrawn injured, of course — after the crash, he’d caught a few quick looks at the deep discoloration on Thrawn’s skin where the purrgils had almost crushed him, leaving massive, red-tinted bruises everywhere they touched. But today was the first time he’d felt anything other than satisfaction about it; a sort of uneasiness bubbled up inside him and he crossed his arms over his chest, trying to will the feeling away.

Stretching out to the Force, he could sense Thrawn’s brain kicking into gear, the mathematical formulae of his mind picking up speed and clarity as he came awake. When he joined Ezra by the river a moment later, his eyes were sharp and he was combing his fingers through his hair, looking a little more like the Grand Admiral Ezra knew.

“You didn’t sleep,” Thrawn said, blatantly staring at Ezra. Ezra shrugged one shoulder and forced his face out of a scowl and into a more neutral mask.

“I slept fine,” he lied. “I just woke up earlier than you.”

After a long moment, Thrawn turned away from Ezra, scanning the surface of the river. He was mulling something over, Ezra could tell, and he stood there silently, filled with nervous energy as he waited for Thrawn to bring up the night before. He had no idea what Thrawn would say — if he would be angry that Ezra had seen such personal memories, if he would lash out either outwardly or passively — and he had even less of an idea how he would react to it himself; all his suspicions from the night before seemed dangerously near.

So when Thrawn finally opened his mouth, Ezra tensed up the same way he would tense in anticipation of a blow, his knees bending and his hands automatically curling into fists — but all Thrawn said was, “Since you’re awake.…”

He didn’t continue right away, forcing Ezra to glance over at him with eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah?” Ezra said.

Thrawn’s eyes slid over to meet his own. “Can you sense the traps beneath the water?” he asked. “With your Force?”

Ezra frowned; as soon as Thrawn posed the question, he became suddenly, irrevocably aware of the large, alien creatures caged below the surface. “I can sense the _fish_ ,” he said, still puzzled, “but not the traps themselves. Why?”

Thrawn considered this for a moment. “Could you perhaps manipulate the traps without seeing them?”

Ezra gave it a cursory amount of thought before dismissing it. “No.” He knew his limits too well to pretend otherwise.

“But if you could see them?” Thrawn asked.

“Well, yeah,” said Ezra, thinking, _Obviously_. Although Thrawn had seemed vaguely dissatisfied with his previous answers, now he inclined his head in evident approval. But before Ezra could ask what Thrawn had in mind — honestly, before he could even process that slight inclination of the head — Thrawn was balancing on one leg at a time to pull off his boots and then, tossing them farther back on the bank, he waded straight into the water. 

“This will be much more efficient with your help,” said Thrawn, his voice barely audible beneath the splash. Two things flickered across his mind at once, both broadcasted to Ezra — the jarringly unpleasant sensation of near-freezing water against Thrawn’s skin first, and a sense of muted excitement and scientific curiosity mingled together second — but neither of these showed on Thrawn’s face. His expression was all business even as he pushed chest-deep into the river. The icy temperature made his muscles stick, spasming against the bone, but he worked through it with a grace and speed that suggested many years of practice.

“Okay, hang on a sec—” Ezra said, but before he could finish the sentence, Thrawn had already ducked underwater. Ezra cut himself off, leaning back on his heels with a roll of the eyes. The surface of the river was placid, the ripples cycling out from where Thrawn had disappeared before slowly evening out and fading away. A minute passed, maybe more, as Thrawn untied the traps.

“Right,” Ezra muttered as he waited. “Cuz I have nothing better to do with my time.”

It was only a handful of seconds later when Thrawn re-emerged with a quiet splash, taking a quick, sharp breath of air and simultaneously hauling a full, cone-shaped basket out of the water. It was strung with camouflaged nets, with a thick cluster of eels squirming around inside. Thrawn blinked rapidly, water streaming down from his flattened hair and into his eyes, and then turned to face Ezra with the trap held above his head.

“Take—” he said.

Using the Force, Ezra lifted the cage out of Thrawn’s hands and floated it to the bank. Momentarily stunned by their apparent gift of flight, the eels got used to it fast and started squirming again as Ezra brought the trap down, making it tremble a little before it touched ground. 

“Yes, thank you,” Thrawn finished, wiping his face. Before Ezra could respond, Thrawn took another quick breath and ducked below the water again. Evidently, he wasn’t interested in wasting time this morning, even to chat. Ezra shifted on the bank a moment, mildly aggrieved by the lack of communication, before curiosity took over; he touched Thrawn’s mind, getting a sense of murky water — clouds of displaced mud obscuring Thrawn’s vision — and Thrawn’s hands working blindly to untie the knots keeping a second trap in place. Halfway through, something in Thrawn’s thoughts inexplicably shifted and he started tightening the knots again instead, undoing the work he’d only just started. 

He stood up, wiping the water off his face again and coughing a little from the small amount that had reached his lungs. Ezra watched him warily.

“Lose your breath?” he asked.

Palming mud off his neck, Thrawn shook his head. “It was empty,” he rasped. 

Ezra looked at him doubtfully. “You couldn’t even see it,” he said. 

Thrawn shook his head again. “The currents are stronger near this one,” he said. “I felt a stray reed brush my hand when I was untying the rear rock weights; the camouflage woven over it must have come loose, and if so, the gate is also gone. Without the gate, nothing can be held captive inside. The fish will simply swim through.”

For a moment, he simply stood there in the freezing water, arms crossed over his chest for warmth and eyebrows furrowed. His fingers curled against his shoulder, physically stopping himself from shivering. Ezra touched Thrawn’s mind again, hoping to get a glimpse at what he was thinking; immediately, Thrawn waved him off with a distracted flick of the wrist.

“You are now willing to use your Force to help with the basic necessities of survival,” Thrawn said, stating it like an empirical observation.

“Again, it’s _the_ Force,” Ezra said; he was somewhat distracted and more than a little irritable due to the mass of eels dying on the ground nearby. “And what do you mean, _now_ I’m willing? I’ve been helping with chores since the very beginning, dude.”

Thrawn just waved him off again, ignoring the objection. “If I were to build a funnel with the open portion facing upstream,” he said speculatively, turning in the water to indicate the north end of the river, “using stakes which gradually narrow going downstream, we could trap fish using a gate similar to those on each of these traps. Upon swimming into it, they would be unable to swim back out.” 

He sketched out an incomprehensible schematic in the air, then looked at Ezra to see if he understood. Ezra just nodded, figuring he’d get the gist of it when Thrawn started building the trap.

“Then,” Thrawn said, “you could simply use the Force to lift the fish from the water, depositing them on the banks when they are needed.” He rested one hand contemplatively on his throat, like an animal absentmindedly protecting itself from an attack; it was an odd gesture Ezra supposed might be common amongst the Chiss. Or it might just be a Thrawn thing. He remembered last night — how Thrawn had touched his throat like feeling a long-healed bruise as he talked about the Dark Side of the Force — and tried to swallow down a sudden stab of guilt.

“In a manner of speaking,” Thrawn said, eyeing the river downstream, “a gate like that would function as a sort of aquarium, keeping the food source alive and fresh until they can be eaten. The shallows downstream are clear, enabling you to see each fish; further, if you are somehow incapacitated, the fish can still be accessed by myself using either a spear or…” He shrugged. “Hand-fishing.”

Ezra’s face twisted as he imagined Thrawn hand-fishing. He sat down heavily on the bank of the river and thought it over; he was reasonably sure he could handle lifting the fish from the river when necessary. He’d already had plenty of practice preparing them for meals — there was something fundamentally different from that and the hide-tanning process Thrawn was constantly trying to teach him; even _thinking_ about that made his gorge rise this early in the morning, whereas the fish scarcely bothered him anymore. 

He glanced up and found Thrawn staring at something up the river, his hand still resting on his throat. Ezra called up the link between them half-heartedly, not really expecting to glean anything new. 

_Twenty-one-point-seven meters from the animal run to the shallows,_ Thrawn was thinking, his calculations surprisingly clear to read. _Approximately fifty stakes, then, of decreasing height in direct proportion to the water level, and no more than eleven smaller stakes will be necessary for the kennel at the end._

And then, hand tightening ever-so-slightly around his throat: _As for the isig’cilik’isha, cant hah csarcican't vacosehn besst ch'at tsuzepah ch'a ch'asnisat vibsi cahyn ch'at nimnisasi bah ch'at ch'ircr_ —

Irritated, Ezra pulled away. He saw Thrawn’s eyes flick toward him knowingly.

“I’m only allowed to practice when _you_ say so, huh?” Ezra said; he noticed that his voice came out sounding more rueful than annoyed.

“It does not qualify as practice if my thoughts are in Basic,” said Thrawn, turning toward the bank and arrowing his hands through the water before him as he finally waded back to land. “That offers you no challenge and no chance to truly exercise your skills.” 

He grabbed hold of an overhanging root and hauled himself up onto the bank not far from the basket trap. He knelt there for a moment, lifting the open end of the weave to make sure they were all dead, and then extricated a water-snake from the batch, his fingers pinched firmly around its jaws. 

“Besides,” he said absently, tossing the snake into the river, “it _is_ my mind. I don’t mind if you poke around in it uninvited, but I reserve the right to push you out at my own discretion.”

Ezra shrugged like it didn’t matter, averting his eyes. The soft rebuke reminded him uncomfortably of Ghost Crew; Kanan and Hera would probably rebuke him the same way. Actually, they’d probably roast him alive if they knew he’d just shoved his way into Thrawn’s brain … though he bet Sabine and Zeb would’ve thought it was cool. Then again, they thought all kinds of shady things were cool. 

He stared out over the river for a long moment, remembering Sabine’s flinty-eyed smile, the way Zeb used to clap him on the back so hard he lost balance. He was over-tired, drained, just exhausted enough that thinking about them tightened his throat and made his eyes burn. He rubbed his eyes and sniffed as quietly as he could before standing up and brushing off his clothes, hoping the flurry of movement would disguise how close he’d come to crying.

Thrawn was watching him openly again, the basket trap secured under his arm, his expression thoughtful but difficult to read. 

“What?” Ezra said defensively, putting some hardness in his voice. 

For a long moment, he didn’t think Thrawn would answer him — but then, with a minuscule, one-shouldered shrug, Thrawn said, “Would you prefer to cook or start collecting stakes?”

Ezra eyed him, trying to figure out if Thrawn’s mind was truly still focused on chores or if this was an uncharacteristically tactful way of changing the subject. Thrawn gazed back at him undaunted, not wavering under Ezra’s scrutiny.

Finally, more than a little sarcastically, Ezra tossed Thrawn a sloppy salute. “Permission to read your mind, sir?” he asked.

Thrawn’s expression didn’t change, but he leaned a little to the right, shifting the weight of the basket trap from one arm to the other. “Granted,” he said, turning on his heel. He set off for camp without another word, clearly expecting Ezra to follow. It took Ezra a moment to coordinate his body (scrambling to catch up with Thrawn) and his mind (scrambling to catch up with Thrawn’s brain), but he figured it out quickly, falling into step at the same moment a channel opened up between them:

He is bare from the waist up but still overheated, his hands dirt-stained and slick with sweat as he leans on the wooden handle of a homemade spade. The sun is high, burning down against his bare shoulders and arms; it takes him a long moment to catch his breath. 

It shouldn’t affect him so much to dig a simple hole; by now, he can no longer deny that his encounter with the purrgils has had a notable physical impact on his body. The bruises have faded, but at night and in the early hours of the morning — when the air is cool — his ribs, his right shoulder, his hip around the ilium; all of it still aches. Perhaps it has impacted his breathing most of all; at times he finds himself inexplicably gasping for air, winded after only a few seconds underwater or struggling to breathe without noise as he stalks an animal through the woods.

There are ways around these shortcomings, he’s found. There are _always_ ways to adapt to a situation. Some of the fowl of this world are roughly the size of wolves, with meat both tender and adequately appetizing for consumption — but they walk on two squat legs, and their necks are long enough to give them tunnel vision when it comes to which areas of this planet are safe and which are not. He can eliminate the need for stealthy tracking — temporarily, of course — by focusing on these fowl; if he digs small ravines in the forest, perhaps 0.75 meters tall, and seeds them with wild grain, the fowl will willingly trap themselves inside. Because their necks are long enough to see over the sides, they think themselves fully capable of flying away, but the narrowness of the tunnel and the height of the walls prevent them from either spreading their wings or climbing out.

His breath comes a little easier now, though still a bit shallow. He straightens his arms with some effort, struggling against stiff muscles, and leans away from the spade before stabbing it into the ground again. His arms ache; it is inefficient to dig so many separate graves. But the officers and enlisted men of the _Chimaera_ were largely Core Worlders, with traditional beliefs which frowned upon cremation as well as mass graves. 

And he does not have to dig thousands of graves, he notes darkly, the corners of his mouth tightening. So far, he has been able to locate and identify only fifteen distinct remains; the rest are buried deep in the ship, too closely entwined with the twisted metal to be located. He slams the sharp tip of the spade into the ground with all his might, leveraging a thick slab of hard-packed dirt out of the hole and shredding blistered skin from his palms at the same time — and his eyes slide to the left against his will, centering on the almost entirely intact body of a hangar technician whom he found lying close to the fractured bay doors. 

His breath seems to stutter. Irritated, Thrawn touches his ribs and turns away. When he closes his eyes and breathes slowly, deeply, he can smell Hangar Technician Kydo’s body as it heats and expands under the sun. 

Strange that he should find it difficult to breathe now, he thinks, when he’s just finished resting. He touches the cool metal of Thrass’s _oth’ola endzali_ with his free hand; he can’t say for certain that it has ever truly calmed or comforted him the way it’s supposed to — sometimes his own emotions are too mild and vague for even him to understand — but he knows the metal always seems warm when it’s too cold outside for comfort, and always seems cool when the sun is too high.

Gradually, the memory dissolved. Sun spots ate up the scenery until Ezra was himself again. He blinked, an echo of the memory clouding his sight and leaving him dazed, and when his vision cleared he realized he was trailing behind Thrawn at a distance.

He hurried to catch up, feeling worse than he did before. The smell of rotting flesh heated up by the sun was lingering in his naval passage, coating his tongue and seeping deeper into his lungs with every breath. His stomach twisted into a tight, empty knot deep inside him, leaving him feeling nauseated and practically immobile, like he couldn’t keep walking until the peculiar feeling went away.

Ahead of him, Thrawn stopped and turned to look at Ezra. He shifted the basket trap in his arms again, sagging a little under the weight.

“You asked,” he said.

Feebly, Ezra nodded; Thrawn gazed at him a moment longer before turning away. They walked back to camp silently, with Ezra lagging behind the whole way. By the time he entered the clearing, Thrawn had knelt near the assembly of flat rocks which had become their food preparation space, efficiently and methodically emptying the basket of eels and the occasional translucent fish. 

Without speaking, he walked past Ezra and into his shelter, returning moments later with the jagged knife they used to prepare food. He stopped in front of Ezra, holding the knife out to him, but Ezra didn’t move to take it. He stared down at Thrawn’s open hand, the rough-hewn bone blade lying flat on his palm, and felt his gut twist again.

Hesitantly, he met Thrawn’s eyes and shook his head. He expected to feel a cold flicker of disappointment echoing through the Force, but there was no emotion in either Thrawn’s mind or his face. He closed his fingers around the knife and looked away, eyes roaming over the heaps of dead eels before shifting toward the river. 

“In that case, you will prepare the stakes,” Thrawn said; there was a lilting quality to his voice that made Ezra think this might be partially a question instead of an order. “Do you remember the approximate quantities and heights needed for the funnel?”

“I…” Ezra hesitated again, unsure what to say. Rather than take this as a cue to keep talking, Thrawn fell completely silent, waiting patiently for Ezra to go on.

“Well,” said Ezra eventually, his eyes drawn inexorably to the spot farther south in the woods where he liked to meditate, “it doesn’t need to be done today, right?”

Thrawn only stared at him for a moment, saying nothing.

“I mean, the basket traps have worked fine so far,” said Ezra, gesturing to the empty one a few meters away. “There’s more food than we can eat in a day over there, so … it seems like a good system. Why shake up a good system?”

“As you’ve said, the winter shelter was also a good system,” said Thrawn evenly.

“Right,” said Ezra. “Exactly.”

Thrawn gazed at him steadily, and for a moment Ezra had the faint hope that Thrawn would just agree and move on — at least for a day or two, long enough for Ezra to sleep and meditate and get rid of the droning buzz of nausea, the ever-present sting of tears clawing at the back of his eyes. The stench that was stuck in his nose of bodies rotting inside the _Chimaera_.

But instead of agreeing with Ezra, Thrawn slipped the knife into his belt and shifted his stance to get more comfortable while he waited, arms crossed loosely across his abdomen.

“Yet the winter shelter was small and cramped, built to retain heat and incapable of withstanding strong winds,” Thrawn pointed out. “Indeed, much of its frame support came from tightly packed snow. A high wind — as you may have noticed, this planet is prone to high winds — will likely destroy the winter shelter before summer begins. If it didn’t, we would be forced to build a new shelter nonetheless; the temperatures in summer are likely to be particularly high, and the temperature inside the winter shelter would be ten degrees higher, or perhaps as many as fifteen, leaving us with no respite from either insects or the heat.”

These were all arguments Ezra had heard before, and it was difficult to listen to them again without letting his impatience show. “Look, I get it,” he said, “but I’m _really_ tired, okay, so—”

“A funnel system will be significantly more efficient than the basket traps,” said Thrawn, his eyebrows furrowing as if he couldn’t understand Ezra’s point of view in the slightest. “It will eliminate hours of work spent emptying and repairing traps, preparing and preserving more fish than we can eat — the amount of energy spent each day in retrieving fish would be reduced to almost nothing, even if you cannot use the Force and we must fish by spear.”

“I _get_ that it’s more efficient,” said Ezra, striving for an even tone. “But I’m not some kind of _droid_ , Thrawn, I need—”

“Then why not execute the plan?” Thrawn asked, jumping in before Ezra could say anything else. “On any of my ships, the words ‘It doesn’t need to be done today’ would lead to reassignment, with more capable and dedicated officers taking the place of the offender. But that is not an option here. We have no one to work with but each other, yet there is always some excuse at hand—”

Ezra’s temper skyrocketed so quickly at the word _‘excuse’_ that he was rendered speechless.

“—some unconvincing reason why you cannot assist in a given chore,” Thrawn said. “You seem not to understand that these are basic survival skills, skills you _must_ learn; you have survived on your own since you were only seven years old, yet now you deliberately seek to avoid these tasks as if they somehow harm you rather than—”

“I’m not _deliberately_ avoiding stuff like this,” Ezra snapped, trying not to sound as heated as he felt. He could feel his eyebrows coming down low over his eyes anyway, a muscle jumping in his clenched jaw. “I’m just _bad_ at it, okay? This isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse, you know.”

The look on Thrawn’s face could only be described as stubborn. “Jedi are warriors,” he said. “Every warrior must be well-versed in survival skills by necessity. And you are a survivor first, a Jedi second. This is second nature to you. Why pretend otherwise?”

 _Survivor_ again. He kept saying that word, and every time it stabbed deep into Ezra’s brain like a heated needle designed to melt right through the flesh. 

Ezra turned away with a bitter shake of his head. His nausea had been replaced by a burning rush of adrenaline, making his arms tremble as he paced. “Look, if you need me to go toe-to-toe with someone in a lightsaber battle, I’m down. If you want me to bootleg some droids or pick a tourist’s pocket, I got your back. This is just _different._ You have _your_ talents, right?”

Thrawn opened his mouth to respond, apparently not recognizing a rhetorical question when he heard one.

“Well, I’ve got mine, too,” Ezra plowed on. “There’s no point in having _me_ build the stakes when it’s gonna take me ten times longer than you and you’ll probably have to redo it all in the end, anyway. It’s not _efficient_. You’re all about efficiency, aren’t you?”

Thrawn raised his hand in a wordless gesture, then let it drop, staring at Ezra like he was a particularly frustrating number puzzle. He shook his head slightly, opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. In the thickening silence, Ezra only doubled down, crossing his arms and openly glaring at Thrawn. To his surprise, Thrawn glowered back, his mouth tight.

“ _Ezra_ ,” said Thrawn finally, pronouncing Ezra’s name with the crisp, even tone of someone making a valid attempt to not be angry. “Read my mind.”

He tapped his temple in invitation. It was the first time he’d used Ezra’s first name instead of his title, and that fact alone was enough to make Ezra pay attention. Warily, he established a connection, reaching out with the Force until his mind touched Thrawn’s. 

Half a second later, he flinched and slammed the connection shut again, overwhelmed by a wave of mind-shattering anger, confusion, and disdain.

“ _Geez_ , dude,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead. Pain stabbed through his frontal lobe, like someone had taken an icepick to his brain. “What the hell?”

“My apologies,” said Thrawn evenly, not sounding even slightly pissed now. “Try again.”

“No way, man,” said Ezra, taking a step back, his face still screwed up in pain.

“Please,” said Thrawn.

 _Please_. Another first, but at least he seemed genuinely contrite. Even more warily than before, Ezra stretched out with the Force. This time the wave of roiling emotions was ten times stronger, slamming into Ezra and sending him back half a step with a pained yelp as he wrenched the connection with the desperation of a trapped animal, until it broke.

“ _Dude_ ,” he said, stumbling away when it was over. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and only succeeded in making himself nauseous. “Leave it to you to kriffing _weaponize_ your thoughts.”

“Everyone is capable of learning new skills, Commander Bridger,” said Thrawn, his tone sounding just like the strict schoolmarm Ezra had as a kid. “Particularly you. In many ways you are more suited to wilderness survival than I am; if you simply apply yourself—”

“What, I’ll suddenly, magically know how to make pots and pans from scratch?” Ezra asked, throwing his hand out to indicate the skillet Thrawn had made out of melted durasteel. “If I _simply apply myself_ I’ll realize I actually knew how to make a blaster out of woven grass all along?”

Thrawn lifted his hand and let it fall in another aborted gesture. For a moment, he stood there with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth a thin line. Then, with an almost deadly look in his eyes, he slipped the leather cord of the _oth’ola endzali_ off his neck and reached for Ezra’s hand. Ezra jerked back, flinching instinctively, but Thrawn seemed to have expected this; he uncurled Ezra’s fingers and pressed the pendant into his palm.

An odd sensation spread from the pendant, an ice-hot feeling that seeped into his skin and spread down to his toes and up to his hairline at a slow, all-consuming rate. His eyes widened for a moment and then a sense of calm seemed to surround his brain from the outside, slowly sinking into the little grey cells that made up his mind.

“Damn,” he breathed, suddenly feeling embarrassed over his outburst — and even over his earlier exhaustion, his preoccupation with Thrawn’s memory of the _Chimaera_ , his bout of nausea and guilt. His cheeks were hot, the rest of his body pleasantly cool. He held the _oth’ola endzali_ out to Thrawn, who took it and re-tied it around his neck, still looking vaguely annoyed.

“Perhaps your greatest trait is flexibility,” he said to Ezra. “Yet now you deliberately repress it, refusing to learn or change — as if you consider yourself incapable of adapting. Or you see yourself as already dead.”

Ezra bit his lip, saying nothing. He still felt a little dazed from the pendant, too dazed to argue back.

“You may know that I have some skill in interpreting works of art,” Thrawn said. “As a military officer, I applied this skill as needed to the task at hand, using examples of artwork from a given species or individual to extrapolate weaknesses and strengths on the starfield. These skills are almost useless here, _but_ —” His eyes narrowed. “—this does not make me helpless.”

It wasn’t the same, Ezra thought wearily, but he didn’t say so aloud. Thrawn had apparently been exiled at least once before in his life, had gone through plenty of trial and error — and possibly even extensive training — to get to where he was today.

“I have some skill also in long-term strategizing as well as improvised battle tactics,” Thrawn said evenly. “As we are not in battle here, I have applied those skills to the basic necessities of survival instead. You are correct in saying our skills are different, Commander; perhaps you would never think to build a funnel trap or snares in order to capture animals. But you do not _need_ to build elaborate snares. You can lift fish from the water without either a weapon or decent aim. You can lull a frightened animal to sleep, eliminating the need for both tracking and stealth. And although I have the height advantage by roughly twelve inches—”

A wild exaggeration if Ezra ever heard one.

“—I believe you are more than capable of out-matching me in strength,” said Thrawn, his eyes glowing intensely, “and you can certainly jump much higher than I can reach. If, for example, our survival depended on attaining a certain degree of height — in the event of an avalanche, perhaps, or an unusually rapid flood — you could simply leap to high ground and be out of harm’s way in a matter of seconds, whereas I would have no choice but to search for a climbable route. In that event, my survival skills might be meaningless, whereas your _lack_ of survival skills would also be meaningless.”

Slowly, Ezra could feel himself thawing to the idea — once he got over Thrawn’s apparent conviction that Ezra was about five feet tall. “But still,” he said uncertainly, “our skill sets are just _different_. I’d never catch up to you in most of this stuff, and when it comes down to stuff like that — I mean, avalanches or whatever — that’s pretty much just luck, isn’t it?”

“No amount of practice will enable me to jump twenty feet vertically,” said Thrawn steadily, patiently. “But even a small amount of guided practice and instruction will improve your basic survival skills. It is true you may struggle to reach my level of _confidence_ , but I doubt very much you will never reach my level of skill. Your level of adaptability is equal to or perhaps greater than mine. Your victory with the purrgils is evidence enough of that.”

He gazed at Ezra, waiting for a reply — waiting for his inspirational speech to take hold, perhaps. Ezra didn’t exactly feel inspired; he felt washed-out and weary — not on-edge or angry like he had before touching the _oth’ola endzali_ , but still exhausted.

With a weary wave of his hand, Ezra summoned the knife. Thrawn’s arm twitched — maybe out of surprise — when he felt the knife unhitch from his belt, but there was no expression on his face as he moved his arm out of the way and watched the knife float through the air to Ezra. He considered Ezra for a moment, their eyes locking.

To Ezra, it felt like a challenge. It was a long, tense minute before Thrawn inclined his head.

“I will handle the funnel,” he said, glancing up at the sun. “We can resume your training after you rest; we don’t wish to fall behind.”

And, not seeming to notice that Ezra could barely stay on his feet, Thrawn turned and walked into the woods to begin his work.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra must face Thrawn's memories of the Chimaera and its wreck.

At midday, Ezra stripped down to his underwear before collapsing into bed; he was so tired he felt feverish, his skin burning against the woven mattress. He’d picked his way through a sparse meal hours earlier, unable to eat much; there was a hard pit inside his stomach that wouldn’t seem to go away. 

He could feel the sun baking through the shelter; he could hear Thrawn not far off in the water, just beginning to pound stakes into the riverbed. His skin was so hot that he couldn’t even rest a hand over his eyes to block out the light.

 _I’ll never fall asleep like this,_ Ezra thought, so tired that just thinking about it almost made him cry.

Eight hours later, he woke up.

The sun was still bright, but much cooler now, the temperature closer to what he’d expect from spring in Lothal. Still groggy, with a mouth that felt like hot sand, Ezra sat up in bed and reached for his shirt with his eyes half-closed. He pulled it over his head, shrugged on his jacket, tugged on his pants and boots.

The sound of Thrawn building the funnel had completely disappeared — probably hours ago, Ezra thought, but he'd been too out of it to notice until now. He made his way out of the shelter, massaging a crick out of his neck, and glanced around the campsite.

He could see a few small, wooden rectangles poking above the surface of the river — the stakes Thrawn had secured against the river bed. And when he stretched out with the Force, he could feel three fish swimming in the corral at the end of the funnel. 

It wasn’t difficult to find Thrawn, either — he was sitting on a log by the fire with his head down and a long, thin stick in his hands, tracing some sort of pattern into a flattened patch of ashes at his feet. When Ezra started walking toward him, Thrawn casually shifted and swept his bare foot over the ashes, eradicating every trace of whatever he’d been drawing or writing in a move that looked completely accidental. He continued idly dragging the stick over the ground as if nothing had happened; by the time Ezra was close enough to see, the pattern in the ashes vaguely resembled a starmap of the Mid Rim, with popular shipping routes arcing from planet to planet.

“Planning a supply run,” Thrawn muttered, resting his chin on his hand. It took Ezra a second to realize this was a joke — and when he did realize it, he was so thrown off balance by the idea of Thrawn making a joke that he didn’t even attempt to laugh.

“What were you drawing before?” he asked instead. Thrawn leaned forward to toss the stick into the grass nearby, then busied himself rolling his sleeves up to his elbows.

“Have you rested sufficiently for a training session?” he asked Ezra.

“I asked you first,” said Ezra.

“Ah,” said Thrawn dryly. “Youngling rules.”

It was _way_ too soon after waking up for Ezra to deal with this. “It’s more like the basic rules of polite conversation,” he said, walking away from Thrawn to raid their store of drinking water. After a solid minute of chugging all the delicious, life-giving water in his canteen, he wiped his mouth and saw Thrawn staring at him, one eyebrow raised.

“You appear sufficiently rested to me,” he said. “Shall we begin?”

Ezra considered holding his ground out of sheer stubbornness, then decided he really didn’t care what Thrawn was drawing. “Let me wake up first,” he said dismissively. Thrawn didn’t respond, simply watching Ezra as he turned around and surveyed the river. “You got the funnel finished,” Ezra said, hoping this wasn’t still a sensitive topic.

“Yes,” Thrawn said. 

“There’s some fish in there, even,” Ezra said, looking at Thrawn over his shoulder. He made a vaguely Force-y gesture with his hand and Thrawn’s eyelids seemed to flicker slightly in response. “I can sense them.”

“Ah,” said Thrawn in the same flat tone as before. Clearly, Ezra reflected, the funnel _was_ still a sensitive subject. He re-filled his canteen and took another long swig of water, tentatively reaching out to the Force and lingering over each of the fish in the corral. It was sort of like a warm-up exercise — like stretching his legs or doing some jumping-jacks in preparation for a long run. Without really noticing what he was doing, Ezra pumped his arms across his chest, limbering up his biceps the same way he did before lightsaber training.

“Are you stalling?” asked Thrawn politely. “Or does physical exercise somehow stimulate your use of the Force?”

Ezra dropped his arms, pretending he hadn’t been stretching. He circled back to the fire reluctantly, taking his time. When he finally sat down on the opposite side of the fire, Thrawn simply stared at him, his expression unreadable, and said nothing.

“You said a few days ago that you wanted me to learn mind-reading because we’re allies now,” Ezra said, meeting Thrawn’s unsettling red eyes. He was glaring at Thrawn, already on the defensive, steeling himself for an argument of some type — though he could never predict just how Thrawn would react to anything he said. If anything, the past forty-eight days had taught him it was next to impossible to provoke Thrawn into anger ... but he _had_ done it at least once, and recently, so he figured it was wise to be wary.

“Yes,” said Thrawn evenly.

“Well, that sort of implies we’re allies _against_ something,” Ezra said. “Right? Like we’re fighting against somebody, not like we’re just … you know, surviving. The way we have been.”

Thrawn’s eyebrow twitched, but he didn’t say anything. He only inclined his head. In a flash, all of Ezra’s doubts from the sleepless night before crowded into his mind, moving too quickly for him to organize them into a single coherent thought. He pushed them aside, took a deep breath, plowed on.

“The enemy we’re fighting against, it’s the Grysks, isn’t it?” Ezra said, letting his breath out in a long sigh as he spoke. “Or at least, that’s who you _want_ to fight. That’s who you _think_ we’re fighting. Right?”

“I do not believe we are fighting anyone,” said Thrawn calmly. “But your assessment is partially correct.”

Ezra waited for him to explain. When he didn’t, Ezra made an impatient gesture with his hands.

“I believe _I_ am fighting the Grysks,” Thrawn clarified. “I believe _you_ are a potential ally in that fight.”

 _Or a potential weapon,_ Ezra thought. He kept this speculation to himself for now; Thrawn was watching him carefully, scrutinizing every minute twitch of Ezra’s face.

“Only you're not fighting _anybody_ here, are you?” Ezra asked, waving his hand at the forest around him. “So what are you gonna do? You think they’re gonna come _here_ so we can fight them? Why would they do that? Are they like, really into camping on primitive worlds nobody’s ever heard of?”

“Nobody in the Empire has ever heard of,” said Thrawn delicately. 

Ezra blinked, then felt a surge of irritation swell in him; _Embrace it,_ he heard Kanan’s voice say in the back of his mind. _Then let it go._ He took a deep breath in through his nose and felt the flicker of anger dissipate, turning cool.

“You’ve heard of this planet before?” he asked, as calmly as he could. He was caught off-guard by the look of mild surprise on Thrawn’s face.

“Not at all,” said Thrawn. “However, it is entirely possible there are other civilized planets in this system; perhaps some are even capable of space travel. Certainly the trace levels of pollution in the atmosphere would suggest high rates of traffic at some point in the past. This planet likely has a name and history of which we are almost entirely unaware.”

 _Almost?_ Ezra thought. He squinted at Thrawn from across the fire and just barely stopped himself from wrestling the answers from Thrawn’s mind. 

“Are you telling me you’ve seen signs of civilization here?” he asked, his voice low and (he thought) remarkably calm. Thrawn crossed his legs and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked disinterested and distracted, like his thoughts were elsewhere.

“Read my mind,” he said, brushing dust off his trouser leg. “Perhaps you’ll find out.”

* * *

The sight of a planet in the distance nearly makes his heart stop, but as the Jedi’s strange beasts draw the _Chimaera_ down through the atmosphere, their pace is steady and controlled. He begins to relax tentatively, only realizing he’s done so when the tentacles wrapped firmly around his chest seem looser, when his breath comes somewhat easier.

It’s a long moment of respite. For forty-six minutes, their descent is controlled, almost sedate. The planet grows beneath them until suddenly it’s all he can see, and he can make out frozen rivers and wide, snow-covered plains — former farmlands, he suspects at once — and long, thick swaths of barren trees. The Imperial failure at Lothal, he realizes, is without a doubt a setback, but not an inescapable one. The purrgils show every intention of setting the _Chimaera_ down gently on the planet’s surface, unscathed; their vector will remain in the ship’s computers should they desire to return to the Empire, and if they do not, they have been given the perfect reason to join the growing coalition of Unknown Regions and Wild Space planets in opposition to the Grysks. 

The Jedi will not be a problem, Thrawn realizes; he will be the _opposite_ of a problem. With enough time and training, he could become the coalition’s greatest asset to date. Clearly, Bridger has not thought this through; perhaps he made this plan and implemented it without fully analyzing the possibilities, because it is clear from his words, his facial expressions, his unconscious gestures that he expected to die today, and is only now realizing he must live — and live with not just one enemy, but with 46,786 of them.

Using the minute amount of extra space given to him by the purrgils when he stopped fighting, Thrawn reaches up, wraps his fingers delicately around the tentacle encircling his chest. He leans forward, closer to the broken viewport, and notes that the shimmering barrier created by the Force has disappeared; perhaps careless of the Jedi, perhaps simply a symptom of exhaustion, perhaps a sign of surprising logic and rudimentary tactical sense. The barrier is not strictly needed now that they’ve entered the planet’s atmosphere, and if Bridger is thinking of the coming fight — like Thrawn has been — he will look for any possible method to save his strength.

They can do this, Thrawn thinks, breathing easily. He and the crew versus Bridger if need be. And then, once they've had time to bring him around, it will be his crew, Bridger, and himself against the Grysks — this so-called defeat may prove to be an unprecedented strategic boon.

Then everything changes.

He notices the shift before Bridger does; the subtle tremble of the deck beneath his feet, the reflexive tensing of the beasts’ tentacles around him, leaving him gasping for breath. He understands immediately, instinctively, and feels like his heart has been ripped from his chest, fear and dismay flickering through his mind even as he examines the situation for solutions: the purrgils have lost control.

There is no time to process this and make a tactical decision; there’s nothing he can rely on but his instincts. He breaks free from the tentacles in a flurry of violence, a burst of sudden energy that takes the purrgils off-guard; they loosen their grip, letting him go perhaps mostly from surprise before responding in kind, their tentacles shooting out for him again. They’ve got his left arm and he has half-turned from the viewport when his feet leave the floor — the purrgils regain their grasp on him, the Jedi has his hand outstretched, teeth clenched in concentration — and Thrawn barks out, _They’ve lost control_ — before the grip on his chest tightens, bruising his ribs, stealing his breath and strangling his voice all at once.

For a moment, time stands still. He is suspended off the floor, his fingers scrabbling for a better grip on the purrgil’s cold, dry skin, his voice hoarse and choking. He feels the _Chimaera_ tilting all around him, sees purrgils breaking free from the ship slowly, with a near-human lowing that sounds like a wail. He watches the forest speed by below them at the wrong angle, too fast — sees stone ruins overgrown with vines and trees — hears Bridger lose his balance, thrown into the crew pits and then slammed against the starboard wall.

The purrgil loses its grip on the ship, but not its grip on Thrawn. He lurches upward in its grasp, his skull crashing into the ceiling as he’s pulled outside, leaving a slim cut across his hairline. His vision darkens dangerously, then comes back in a blur. By the time the purrgil eases away from the ship, breaking free to save itself from an imminent crash, Thrawn has one arm free again and he claws at the frame of the broken viewport, shards of durasteel sliding into his skin, nails ripped from his fingers as he scrabbles for traction. His arm wrenches; blood sears into his eyes, clings to his lashes as he blinks it away; he reaches for the ship and finds it just out of reach, and now he’s not on the ship at all — he’s clutched in the purrgil’s grasp, floating free above the planet’s surface.

 _The Jedi is still on the bridge,_ he thinks, heart leaping. It isn’t too late to mitigate casualties. Bridger is an experienced pilot, a _skilled_ pilot, a Force-sensitive — he has time, he can gain control, he can fly the _Chimaera_ to safety — he can save the crew, he can land the ship without casualty, he can fly away and leave Thrawn here and avoid even the _possibility_ of casualties if he wants to, he can—

The _Chimaera_ angles downward, arrowing toward the white earth. The hangar doors slide open and then snap close again, gravity trapping a TIE Defender between two unforgiving slabs of durasteel, breaking off the wings as it tries to escape. From the broken viewport, Ezra Bridger emerges, blood streaked across his forehead, confusion and panic evident in his eyes. Why isn't he at the control station? Why is he clinging to the frame? From a distance, Thrawn can see every expression on the Jedi's face. Ezra sees the ground lurching up toward him and his gaze flickers up to the last fleeing purrgil, the one fifteen, maybe twenty meters above him in the air.

 _No,_ Thrawn thinks, his grip on the purrgil tightening. _No_ _—_

But Ezra doesn’t attempt to land the ship. He jumps.

* * *

The purrgil lets go of him the moment it slams into the ground, seconds before he slams into the ground himself. He ducks his head and covers it with his arms, taking the impact at a roll. Snow stabs at the exposed skin on his hands and face; the impact jars his bones, smashes his brain against his skull, clashes his teeth as he skids across the scrim of snow and ice away from the purrgil. 

When the ship crashes — maybe before he hits the ground, maybe after — it seems to shatter every bone in his body without even touching him. He blacks out, wakes up moments later on his side with his back against a gnarled and splintered tree, meters away from where he first struck the ground. The cold seeps up into him through his right side, numbing and stinging all at once, his hands locking up in the snow. They’re raw, bleeding from his desperate scrabble for purchase on the bridge, from scraping along in the snow as he struck ground. A dull roar fills his ears; he sees everything through a greying haze until he blinks — blinks several times — and finally takes in everything before him.

The purrgil which carried him to safety shakes itself off, lurching from one heaving flank to the other in a struggle for balance. A tree crashes down not far from Thrawn, forcing him to half-roll, half-crawl away to avoid being crushed. He staggers to his feet in the same movement, taking in the shattered clearing in the woods, not processing much of what he sees.

The Jedi is the first thing Thrawn notices. He lies not far away, his body limp, his eyes closed, chest moving up and down in the even breaths of an unconscious man. Purrgils circle overhead, their mouths opening, a deep rumble in Thrawn’s veins telling him without a doubt that they are calling to each other, even though he can’t hear it. What he _does_ hear — what reaches him through the roaring deafness in his ears — is something muted but intimately familiar, something he’s heard at least once a month, every month, during drills for the past six years. 

It’s the standard hull breach alarm installed on every Imperial vessel.

And a twisted metal heap in the center of it all, unrecognizable as his ship, is burning.

He takes a step forward, legs numb, and feels his ankle give way with an unnatural, grinding roll. He catches himself with his palms flat deep in the snow and stumbles to his feet again, ignoring the pain as it shoots up through his leg and into his spine. This time, when he steps forward, he doesn’t fall. He grits his teeth until he stops feeling the pain at all. 

He walks, then runs, then finds what balance he can and sprints unsteadily to the _Chimaera_ , snow spraying out all around him, and all he can hear is the dull roar of blood in his ears and the hull breach alarm and the shuddering noise of his own breathing. 

He leaps over debris and catapults himself to the nearest part of the _Chimaera_ , running so fast he can’t stop himself in time. He can feel himself frowning, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and the expression doesn’t break even as he slams into the durasteel hull. The starboard side of the ship lies crumpled and half-buried in a deep rift in the earth, with the bridge three hundred meters off the ground. Small explosions rock the ship from the far side, making the plates beneath his hands jump and settle in something almost like a pattern. He launches himself up the heated surface of the ship, scrabbling for hand-holds on the exterior before he slams to one knee at the collapsed mouth of the bridge, his palm landing flat on the searing durasteel. Where an open window gave way to the bridge of his ship just moments before, there is now only a solid wall.

His hands run frantically over every crack in the crumpled surface, fingers digging in anywhere they can, searching for purchase. Breath coming fast and ragged, he pushes to his feet again, starting to run before he’s even fully standing. It's useless here; he has to find another access point. He slides down to the other side of the bridge, intense heat lashing off the _Chimaera’s_ hull, flames shooting out to lick at his skin.

He finds the starboard side of the _Chimaera_ utterly crushed, completely caved in _(father’s face blackened and destroyed, mother’s bloating out from the string around her neck)_ and he recognizes immediately that anyone trapped on this side of the ship is not likely to have survived impact. He turns on his heel as soon as he sees this, wasting no time — on the other side, on the port side, the damage is less severe, there may yet be functional hatches he can work his way into, might be weak spots in the structure he can hack at — _could_ hack at, could maybe even break right through if his blaster hadn’t been wrested out of his hand by the Force.

He scrabbles along the port side with his palms flat on the burning metal, searching for an opening, for any way in. Behind him, the Jedi still lies on the forest floor, asleep.

_The Jedi._

He pushes himself back from the _Chimaera_ in a frantic, graceless stumble, turns at once and races over the mess of shattered durasteel and falling trees. He staggers and falls once, his hands coming down on the outstretched tentacle of a purrgil crushed beneath the ship; heart cracking in his chest, hands tingling with blood and heat, he pushes himself back up again. It feels like he flies over the uneven banks of snow before coming back down at Bridger’s side.

Taking his pulse. Checking the depth and severity of the cut on his forehead — not serious. Prying his eyelids open, slapping him urgently, repeatedly on the cheek.

The eyes come into focus; the Jedi lifts his head, looking not at Thrawn but past him at the sky, the purrgils circling overhead like vultures.

 _The ship,_ Thrawn says urgently, his hands curling into fists, grasping Ezra’s collar tight. The Jedi looks at him, dazed and concussed, not comprehending. Desperately, Thrawn pulls him up into a sitting position, tangling his fingers in the Jedi’s hair, forcing him to keep his head up and look. 

_The ship is burning,_ Thrawn says. _They’re trapped inside._

Still, the Jedi only stares. If Thrawn shakes him, he knows, it will only make the concussion worse — the Jedi will turn pale, perhaps lose consciousness again, perhaps suffer permanent damage. He can’t afford the time it will take to revive him, can’t risk the potential consequences. Better to be careful with him, to make him understand rather than attempt to shake the confusion away.

Using his grip on the Jedi’s hair, he turns his head, forces Bridger to look him in the eyes. He sees horror, confusion there. Disbelief.

With his free hand, Thrawn covers the wound on the Jedi’s forehead, stems the meager blood flow with his palm. His thumb presses over Ezra’s left eye, glued shut by drying blood, and wipes the obstruction away — clears his vision so he can see where he is. What he’s done. 

_They’re burning,_ he says, voice low. _The ship’s entrances have all collapsed. There are obstacles everywhere and I can’t lift them alone._

The eyes looking back at him are wide and blank, the lashes flaked with dried blood. 

_Help them,_ Thrawn says, his jaw clenched, his hands shaking. _Use the Force._

He needs Ezra to understand. He needs him to wake up, to help, to lift the obstacles out of the way the same way he barricaded the bridge to keep the oxygen from leaking out, the same way he snatched Thrawn’s blaster out of his hand and pushed him into the purrgil’s grasp. He needs him to understand and help _now,_ before it’s too late.

But Ezra’s gaze shifts toward the _Chimaera_ and the set of his face turns tired and slack, his eyes hooded, his consciousness already fading away.

 _They’re dead,_ he says simply, emotionlessly. _There’s no one there._

* * *

The days last longer here. It is still light out when he leaves their makeshift shelter the next day; the Jedi has opened his eyes and tried to speak a handful of times since the crash, but has never really regained lucidity. He burns with a fever, his eyes glazed on the few occasions he opens them, but he does not appear to have any infected wounds. 

In any case, it is safe to leave him alone for now. Thrawn walks the woods silently, moving over thin layers of snow. His uniform — stained by blood, smoke, and dried earth from when the heat of impact-triggered explosives inside the _Chimaera_ turned the cold earth around it into mud — offers him little protection from the cold, but he scarcely feels it. The closer he gets to the wreck, the hotter his blood becomes, the more it stings beneath his skin.

In the clearing, the fire is out and the purrgils — all of them except the one crushed beneath his ship — are gone. Thrawn stands frozen on the edge of the forest for a moment, his feet glued to the ground, his lips a thin line.

Everyone inside his ship is dead, killed on impact or in the resulting burst of flames, the explosions which rocked the ship from stern to bow. He knows this much from Commander Bridger — or rather, _Bridger_ knows it, and he expects Thrawn to believe him. Intellectually, perhaps, Thrawn does; he has seen the Jedi ability to sense life a handful of times before, knows that it’s possible Bridger is correct just as it’s possible he’s wrong. He knows, too, that in all his years of service he’s never seen anyone survive a crash like that, or live through the explosions after.

He thinks of himself, not much older than Bridger, recovering from near-strangulation at a Jedi’s hands just in time to watch explosives tear into a ship full of almost fifty thousand civilians. He thinks of Thrass watching him leave with Ar’alani, neither of them really saying goodbye. His body goes numb, the _oth’ola endzali_ cold against his chest. 

With difficulty, he forces himself to move.

The lever he built yesterday in-between building the shelter and tending to Bridger’s wounds is crude but functional, and sits not far from the wreckage, outside the scope of flames that have now died away — in a sense, they’re both lucky the purrgils consumed as much fuel as they did. If they hadn’t, the _Chimaera_ would be burning still. 

Thrawn lifts the lever with a grimace, baring his teeth in both pain and effort — his ribs are still tender, his muscles still screaming from the impact of his body against the ground and his long, sleepless night and day afterward. 

He half-carries, half-drags the lever across the wet ground, his boots squelching in the mud. Snow falls into his hair, melts on the exposed skin of his hands. On the tilted upper side of the Star Destroyer, the rudimentary beginnings of an opening await him, a remnant of his work last night when the fire began to die. The hangar doors in the center of the ship are damaged, crumpled by the blast, but he’s managed to pry them apart, and today he sets to work immediately, widening the opening until he can squeeze through and bring the lever with him. 

He slides a few inches down through the hangar at an angle, everything around him tilted to the side — it’s too cramped to move freely. Unrecognizable debris fills the hangar, creating a mass of melted walls everywhere Thrawn looks. What look like unsecured equipment and crashed fighters lie everywhere, barely discernible from the rubble, forming a mess that can practically be called untraversable. The landing barge is strewn with smoke-stained pieces which might belong to AT-ATs; flight deck control has been pulverized by the weight of a TIE boarding craft crushing it. 

The armored compartments of the TIE bombers show significant fire damage, but are still sealed; the bombs must have been set off in the crash. Thrawn uses the lever to dislodge whatever he can, hurling it back to the narrow entrance through which he came, but he makes it only three meters into the hangar before he is forced to abandon the lever entirely. He leaves it where it is, arms shaking from effort already as he hauls himself over debris and slides through tight spaces on his back. He feels sharp edges catching at his skin, ripping his uniform as he crawls through the rubble.

The wreckage of a TIE fighter blocks his path, barely identifiable from fire damage. The solar array support frame has crumpled, its energy collectors twisted into an impenetrable wall. Thrawn crawls out of the tunnel of debris behind him and finds himself pressed tight against the support frame, his arm pinned to a dull collection coil, his left leg trapped in a crack between the cockpit access hatch and the arm of the fighter. Simultaneously, the same leg supports all his weight, leaving him momentarily trapped, unable to move.

He eyes the coils and the heat exchange matrix not far from his eyes, notes their location coolly; they might be salvageable — though he doubts it, knows that even his repair skills aren’t that good, especially without a lab to work from — but if they are, they could be useful in heating the winter shelter or in building a spacecraft of sorts from scratch. But there is nothing he can do to collect them right now; he looks back the way he came, examining every detail of the debris, every collapsed wing and disconnected, fire-damaged engine. He has to crane his neck at an uncomfortable angle to avoid a sharp edge of metal scrap jutting toward his head; in doing so, he feels his shoulder seize up in protest, a crippling pain electrifying his nerves for a moment, forcing him to hold still.

Until it fades, he lets his gaze wander, looking for signs of life. The pain becomes a blessing in disguise soon enough; it has just started to ease when his eyes track over a broken radiator panel wing and land on something flesh-toned, something that wasn’t manufactured in a lab.

A human hand sticking out beneath the wreckage. 

His heart stops, then leaps, beating painfully in his chest. The injured crewmember lies not far from Thrawn, all distinguishing features lost in the debris, crushed beneath a thousand pounds of crumpled durasteel. Only the hand remains visible, the fingers limp, the skin bruised deep purple from trauma.

It takes Thrawn a moment to speak; his breath doesn’t come in the way it should, leaving him winded even though he's standing still.

 _Don’t struggle,_ he forces himself to say, and he’s glad to hear the crisp, calm quality of his own voice. It betrays no anxiety, no dread. _I see you. I’m coming for you._

Using his pinned arm as leverage, Thrawn climbs up and out of the narrow trap he’s found himself in, then forces himself through a slim space between a disconnected docking ring and what looks to be a damaged droid hold. Jagged metal slices at his palm, leaving a searing cut from the base of his little finger to the opposite edge of his wrist. He lands without much room to breathe, propped up on trembling arms mere centimeters from the trapped crewmember, dripping blood on the unstable wreckage beneath him.

 _I’m here,_ he says, more than a little breathless now. He takes the hand, warm and limp, in his injured one, closing his fingers over the discolored fingers of a crewmember he can’t identify. The opening in the durasteel is just wide enough for Thrawn to slide his right hand inside — he squirms down closer to the crewmember, his head tucked painfully against his shoulder so he can reach farther inside. He can’t breathe, not in this position, so he sucks in one deep breath and holds it as he feels his way to the crewmember’s sleeve and clenches his fingers around it reflexively, holding on tight. When he pulls, the crewmember’s arm doesn’t budge. 

He moves back, recognizing a type of resistance he can't fight from this angle, and feels blindly over the durasteel instead. He learns by touch the extent of damage to the structure, the harsh angles bearing down on his crewmember’s body. Blood from the wound on his palm smears against the crewmember’s bruised knuckles, and he shifts his stance to reach deeper into the crevice, but he doesn’t let go.

He finds the crewmember’s sleeve again, notes the stiff, dry quality of the cloth — bloodstains — feels the bones shifting unnaturally beneath the crewmember’s skin. It feels as though the arm is filled with beads or broken glass, so intense is the damage. The arm will have to be amputated, Thrawn knows, but if he can just locate some bacta — and even if he can’t, amputation is a survivable operation—

But then his fingers close on an open wound, the exposed muscle soft and wet. There is no body trapped beneath the durasteel; there’s only this arm, ripped off at the elbow; only this hand clutched tightly in his own, kept warm by the lingering heat of last night’s explosions.

For a long moment, he stays there, his forehead resting against the durasteel, the unknown crewmember’s bruised hand clasped in his own.

He doesn’t let go.

* * *

By the time Bridger’s fever breaks, there is a pile of debris both large and small lying at the foot of the _Chimaera’s_ wreck in a direct downward slide from the hangar doors. Anything Thrawn can lift, anything he can force through the propped-open doors — the shattered remnants of spacecraft, destroyed circuits and panels from maintenance droids and ships — it all lies in a heap now, forming an unstable, haphazard staircase to the hangar doors.

He finds one solar panel with an uneven black layer of gunk plastered to the side; it sticks to Thrawn’s fingers when he touches it. He sees human hair embedded in it, slivers of bone, and realizes this is the melted muscle, blood, and gristle of a human being. Of one of his subordinates, one of his colleagues.

He finds a partial human jaw severed from the rest of the head, red-stained teeth attached loosely to the bone; from the auburn tint of hair on the jaw, from the pale skin, he suspects this is Stormtrooper Commander Durand. The rest of the remains he finds are largely unidentifiable; in the entire hangar, he finds only one body intact, and it takes him hours to extricate it from the wreckage and lay it in the snow a hundred meters away, in the unscarred part of the forest. 

He lays down next to it, exhaustion pulling him onto his back in the snow. The cold numbs and soothes him, sinking deep into his skin. Above him, white flakes swirl in a gentle wind. Beside him, the ruined face of Hangar Technician Kydo is exposed to the winter sun.

The skull is crushed, the head intact but deformed. The uniform has been burnt, but Thrawn knows who it is without question; he doesn’t need a code cylinder to identify any member of his crew. He sits up with a sigh, snow and sweat both dampening his hair, and leans over Kydo’s body. 

He tilts Kydo’s head to the north without thinking about it, his fingers gentle on the ruined jaw, then grimaces in chagrin — but he doesn’t tilt the head back down. He leaves it where it is, facing the stars.

Facing the part of the forest where he saw the ruins.

The part where the purrgils lost control.

Slowly, heart thudding in his ears, Thrawn turns and faces north, too.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra processes what he’s seen.

The barren trees, the smoke-stained snowscape — all of it faded slowly, leaving Ezra with only one impression of the memory: the sound of Thrawn’s racing heartbeat drowning out everything else. Gradually, that ended too, replaced by his own quiet, shallow breaths and a sensation of hollowness, like he’d been gutted while he wasn’t looking.

“It’s not deserted,” he whispered, feeling weak. Thrawn watched him from across the fire, his eyes giving off a faint glow. Ezra’s thoughts were in a swirl, his emotions impossible to identify; he could feel the Force crowding in on him, overwhelmingly loud. “You’re telling me there are _people_ here,” he said, trying to suss that last memory out, “that someone _made_ us crash…?”

A beat of silence passed after Ezra trailed off. It seemed almost like Thrawn was waiting for him to go on, but he couldn’t — his head was swimming, he couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say. He saw the eerie image of himself abandoning the _Chimaera’s_ bridge playing over and over again in his mind’s eye. The fear in his eyes, the obvious panic, the child-like loss of control. Everything had happened so fast and up until now he’d thought — he'd _told_ himself — that there was nothing else he could do, that this situation was inevitable — that he’d handled the crash of the _Chimaera_ with the calm, quick thinking of a Jedi.

But he hadn’t seen any of that calmness in Thrawn’s memories. He hadn’t seen a Jedi making a quick decision, the only _possible_ decision. He'd seen a teenage boy jumping out of harm’s way and leaving everyone else to die.

Eventually, Thrawn answered, “No. This planet is indeed deserted.”

Ezra felt small; his limbs felt weak, unmovable. “But the ruins…” 

“There are traces of civilization throughout the planet,” Thrawn acknowledged with an inclination of his head. “That is all they are — traces. There are no signs of recent life.”

This information joined the troubling swirl of possibilities filling his head. He folded his arms tightly over his stomach like an injured man trying to hold his intestines in; it didn’t do anything to soothe his nausea. What could wipe out life on an entire planet so thoroughly? Some sort of plague? A natural disaster? Or was it genocide?

A thought popped into his head suddenly — something Thrawn had mentioned days before, but Ezra had pushed out of his mind. He bit his lip, wishing he could simply dismiss it again, pretend it had never been said. But the thought wouldn’t go away, and soon he found himself opening his mouth and heard the question he didn’t want to ask coming out.

“You said the Empire had a weapon, right?” he said tentatively, still hunched over himself. “Something the TIE Defenders were supposed to prevent?”

Thrawn gazed back at him steadily. “The Death Star.”

It felt like a cold fist had closed around Ezra’s gut. 

“A massive battle station,” Thrawn continued, “estimated to be one hundred sixty kilometers in diameter or roughly the size of a small moon, though I have not seen it myself. Its existence is a secret even from high-ranking military officers. The station itself is built around a hypermatter reactor capable of generating enough power to destroy a planet in its entirety.”

 _Whole planets_ — that was the part Ezra had remembered, the part that stuck in his mind no matter how hard he tried to get rid of it. Whole planets like this one?

“The purpose of the Death Star,” said Thrawn, his eyes drifting away from Ezra, “is to control the Empire and its citizens through fear. I do not believe this to be an effective or honorable solution; when I learned of its existence, I believed that if I proposed a more rational solution, perhaps the Emperor would eradicate the Death Star entirely.

“The TIE Defenders were such a solution; equipped with shields and hyperdrives, they both protected Imperial pilots and allowed them to pursue the enemy more efficiently, reducing casualties while increasing victories. With Defenders in place of the Death Star, the amount of risk to both enemy and ally lives would decrease substantially.”

Thrawn’s eyes slid back to meet Ezra’s, his face impossible to read. “Unfortunately,” he said, holding Ezra’s gaze, “this is no longer a viable solution.”

 _Kanan_. A sharp pain ripped through Ezra’s chest, forcing him to avert his eyes. If Thrawn were telling the truth, it meant his Master’s sacrifice, the sacrifice he'd admired and striven to emulate, wasn’t only unnecessary — it was actively harmful. The Lothal Rebels had been called uninformed, reckless, a hundred times before — not just from Imperial officers like Thrawn, but even from allies within the alliance. If the Death Star was real, then all those people were right; Kanan had given his life to take down a measly TIE fighter, and in the process he’d inadvertently given rise to something far worse, something unspeakably evil.

Ezra had no choice; he forced this out of his head immediately, unable to even consider it, and focused on something else instead.

“Is it possible…” he started. “I mean, do you think…?”

He gestured futilely at the land around him.

“No,” said Thrawn evenly, “I do not believe a similar weapon was put to use here. A weapon such as the Death Star does not only kill people, Commander Bridger. There would be no planet left — and it is clear as well this was no natural disaster or plague.”

Ezra scrubbed at his face, trying to follow Thrawn’s reasoning. Trying to ignore the feeling that Thrawn had just read his mind. “How do you figure?”

“A natural disaster that eradicates sentient life but leaves the animals unharmed?” Thrawn replied. “A plague which eliminates multiple sentient species, all with distinctly different immune systems? Because there is evidence in the ruins of at least three sizable populations of sentient species, one of them insectoid.”

“Okay,” said Ezra, “so what, you think—?”

“Genocide,” said Thrawn simply. He clasped his hands loosely between his knees, gazing off into the forest. Ezra noticed Thrawn’s right thumb running over his left palm, over the cut he’d received shortly after the crash. It had long since healed, leaving no scar behind — yet Thrawn still knew exactly where it had been, still traced it when he was thinking. “I think it likely that the sentient life on this planet was eradicated from the inside, with the perpetrators later transported off-planet by a more advanced society,” Thrawn said. 

From his mind, Ezra caught a flicker of emotion — the barest hint of a memory. Dark tunnels, Chiss commoners trampling each other in their panic to get away. That muted reaction stood out starkly against the landscape of Ezra’s own brain, where his emotions were twisting around each other in an opaque cloud, no more readable or coherent than the dust kicked up after an explosion on city streets.

He shut it down; he didn’t have another option, not if he wanted to keep functioning tonight. He let himself detach from the thoughts and memories, the emotions — Kanan’s face, Kanan’s voice, his parents gone and him, against all odds, still here — and felt it all sink deeper down within him, lost to the dark. 

Simultaneously, he felt the cool contact of Thrawn’s mind fade away. The flicker of emotion and the chaotic memories were replaced by something all too familiar — the distant, unknowable string of ciphers cascading into each other like a computer-generated spiderweb. He'd lost the thread of Thrawn's emotions now.

“I have found the remnants of engravings at the ruins,” Thrawn said softly. “They show an invading force far stronger and more technologically advanced than the planet’s natives, descending from the sky. They indicate warring factions between the natives as well, factions of which the invaders likely took advantage.”

He made eye contact with Ezra, his mind and face utterly unreadable. 

“I believe,” he said, “this planet has been attacked by the Grysks.”

Ezra huddled closer to the fire, cognizant of a sudden drop of temperature in the air. Overhead, the sky was darkening, storm clouds eating up every pale spot of blue. They lingered over the northern forest, swelling there, biding their time. Ezra looked back at Thrawn with a shiver, and when he called up the link between them, he was completely incapable of reading Thrawn’s mind.

“You think they killed everyone?” Ezra asked.

“I think they persuaded the people of this planet to kill each other,” Thrawn corrected. His hand closed around his _oth’ola endzali._ “Likely, they divided the societies here into warring factions and assimilated the victors, using them as slaves. Or as weapons to be turned against still other species.

“And,” he said, his eyes boring into Ezra’s, “if they’ve been here before, I believe they might come back.”

* * *

The storms blew in that night and didn’t stop for days. In the first few hours, when the wind was high but the rain was light, Thrawn led the way through the forest, away from the river. Ezra followed behind, one of the shelters floating unsteadily in the air ahead of him. It took all his concentration to hold it up and keep it together, but it was well-built and designed for easy transportation exactly because of situations like these. 

Besides, with the shelter in front of him, he didn’t have to squint through the wind and lashing rain like Thrawn did. He only had to maintain his connection to the Force and keep putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring whatever petty little obstacles came his way. It was the worst time for fresh foliage to be coming in; tall plants surrounded them, wet leaves brushing against Ezra’s face with every step and transferring rain drops to his clothes.

They moved the shelters to high ground a little more than a kilometer away from the river. Overkill, in Ezra’s opinion — but then again, he was pretty sure from Thrawn’s memories that he’d never actually been through a natural flood (how could he, growing up in caves?), so maybe a little bit of overkill was understandable. After the first successful transfer, they worked separately, with Ezra floating the shelters themselves and Thrawn trailing behind, loading the rest of the supplies onto a wooden sledge and pulling it over the forest floor. It took them hours, and by the time they were more or less settled — driving the posts of each shelter deep into the wet ground — the rain was coming down fast. 

They were soaking wet by the time they made it inside, each of them ducking into separate huts. The arrangement of fresh-picked moss and tightly-woven thatch on each shelter kept the interior dry, and Ezra sat in the middle of his, all his possessions disarranged, listening to rain tap mutedly against the shelter roof in the dark. 

With his eyes adjusting, he plucked at the wet shirt sticking to his skin and pulled it over his head; it was so soaked he couldn’t even use it to dry his hair. Half-blindly, he reached for the handmade trunk of dry clothes sitting nearby and dug out a new shirt. He held it out before him, squinting; he could tell by the feel of it that something was wrong. It was made out of softened leather, like many of Ezra’s clothes since the crash, but as he ran his hands down the sleeves, it seemed like they went on for too long, like he was holding a small tent instead of a shirt.

Sure enough, once his eyes adjusted a little more, he could tell it was Thrawn’s shirt, not his. He tossed it aside for the moment, rifling through the trunk — but this wasn’t some haphazard mix of his clothes thrown together with Thrawn’s. It was simply Thrawn’s trunk, placed in Ezra’s shelter by mistake. There was nothing in here that fit him. 

With a sigh, he pulled the too-big shirt over his head, figuring it must be better than whatever Thrawn was going through next door. He crawled across the floor on his hands and knees, feeling for the makeshift bed frame. Instead, he found another box; it rattled when he bumped into it, a sound like metal on metal that he could barely hear over the thunder.

Looking inside, he saw Thrawn’s box of salvaged parts — loose wires and broken circuit boards, dented comlinks, a single datapad with a melted screen. Ezra pushed the box away from him like it was filled with venomous snakes; he fell backward onto his palms, heart thudding for a reason he couldn’t explain and didn’t want to examine.

The holoprojector was in there somewhere — the one with all the pictures on it of Kana Pyrondi and her friends in the _Chimaera’s_ crew. Ezra buried his face in his hands, wiping the residual rainwater out of his eyes. Wind rocked the shelter, making every post creak with the effort of standing. 

He sighed and pulled himself closer to the box, kneeling before it in the dark. The holoprojector seemed to slide into his hand of its own volition as he reached inside, metal slotting coolly against his palm. In the next moment, it was powering on with a whir, though Ezra couldn’t be certain he’d pressed the button — at least, not on purpose. He could feel the Force pounding against his temples, invisible hands clutching his head and whispering at him to _look_. 

He scrolled through the images reluctantly, barely seeing them but lingering for long seconds, even minutes, on each one. The Imperial uniforms blurred together; the faces became impossible to distinguish. He scooted backward until he found the bed and pushed himself off the floor without letting go of the holoprojector, collapsing backward onto his thin, woven mattress. 

The images suspended above his head flickered and changed. There were two pictures of Thrawn in here — one where he stood at the viewport of the bridge in the dull olive uniform of a lower-ranking officer, his back to the camera but his head tilted to the left, eyes sliding sideways to focus on whoever took the picture — probably Pyrondi, since it was her projector. It was likely she hadn’t seen Thrawn watching her at the time, Ezra thought — he wondered if she’d been reprimanded afterward for taking pictures on the bridge. The other photo, more recent, showed Thrawn in his white Grand Admiral’s tunic, pinning a new rank insignia on Pyrondi’s lapel. Their backs were stiff, Pyrondi’s chin held high; she stood at attention, but there was a slight smile on her lips, a certain warmth to Thrawn’s eyes that suggested a working relationship better than most Ezra himself had ever been a part of.

A working relationship like the Ghost Crew had, Ezra realized. That’s what every single one of these pictures showed — Imperial officers who were _friends_ , who had complex relationships and inside jokes, who complained about their job in short videos and trained their hardest in others, eager to prove they wouldn’t let the Grand Admiral down. People who saw each other as family, who loved each other, who could be loyal and kind as much as they could be petty and cruel.

He’d killed them all. 

Thrawn’s memory was right — Ezra had been the only man on the bridge, the only person who had the power to stop the crash. He couldn't blame a lack of knowledge for his failure. He had experience with Imperial ships, he knew the layout of a Star Destroyer, could have easily located the control board and stopped things in time. But instead, he’d fled the moment he got a chance. Survival skills, flexibility — whatever Thrawn wanted to call it, _that_ was the irredeemable facet of Ezra’s personality that led him to jump to safety rather than stay behind to help. He’d seen the purrgils abandoning the ship, felt the tilt of the deck beneath him — he’d been thrown across the bridge into the crew pits and then the bulkhead, and adrenaline had kicked in upon impact and scrambled his thoughts entirely.

And when he’d seen Thrawn — his enemy — being pulled away, he’d gone after him, thinking offensively rather than defensively, like a soldier instead of a Jedi, thinking he couldn’t let his target escape, thinking he had to get out of there before the crash killed him and Thrawn got away.

And what had _Thrawn_ been thinking about? 

Only his people. He’d done everything he could to escape the purrgils, not so he could get away to safety but so he could help, even trying to warn Ezra the ship was about to crash — believing, perhaps naively, that his enemy would help him save the _Chimaera_ and its crew.

And _why_ would he think that? This was the part Ezra puzzled over, the part he couldn’t quite figure out. In any world, it seemed unreasonable to expect a soldier to _save_ his enemies rather than kill them; it seemed only slightly less unreasonable for the enemy to feel no guilt after the fact. But Thrawn had so implicitly trusted Ezra to save the _Chimaera_ that there was still a faint sense of shock and betrayal lingering in his mind each day — and Ezra _did_ feel guilty about it, so guilty that it seemed to simultaneously eat him up and freeze him in place.

Where did that sort of trust come from? It hadn’t crossed Thrawn’s mind for even a second that Ezra might abandon ship — he knew, because he’d seen it in Thrawn’s mind. Was it some sort of unlikely faith in the Jedi? Did his past experience with the Order — or with his brother, who’d been Force-sensitive, too — somehow instill the conviction in Thrawn that Ezra would do anything he could to save enemy lives?

Or did Thrawn believe it simply because that’s what _he_ would do? This seemed like the easiest option to dismiss out of hand — he’d heard from Hera about what happened at Batonn, all those civilians killed under Thrawn’s command — yet it lingered in Ezra’s mind and refused to go away. He remembered how Thrawn had raced to Ezra’s unconscious form after the crash, tending to his enemy's wounds even as the ship burned.

Yes, this had been a largely selfish move — Thrawn’s own memory of the event confirmed that. But after Ezra told him there was nobody left alive on the _Chimaera_ , what had Thrawn done? He’d stayed awake well into the next day building a shelter for _both_ of them; he’d cleaned the wound on Ezra’s forehead and watched it for infection; he’d gone back to the _Chimaera_ when he knew Ezra was safe to search for survivors, building a lever because he knew Ezra couldn’t help him remove obstacles from the wreck. Over the next weeks, he’d returned to the _Chimaera_ daily, spending every ounce of sunlight there — pulling charred and incomplete bodies from the wreckage, scavenging clothing for both of them from the mostly-intact cabins, finding Pyrondi’s holoprojector and tucking it away in his pocket without a word to Ezra about what he had found.

At that point, hadn’t Ezra become useless to him? He couldn’t assist in the rescue or the scavenging; on the few occasions he woke, he was exhausted and only semi-lucid, unable to use the Force. Strategically — and wasn’t Thrawn _always_ thinking strategically? — that would have been the ideal time to kill Ezra, to eliminate the enemy Thrawn had been fighting for so long. 

Assuming, of course, that defeating Ezra was truly his goal.

The holoprojector scrolled automatically through the remaining photos, then went blank with an audible click as it reached the end. Ezra stared at the warm disc of metal in his hands, the rain coming down hard overhead. It was a long moment before he sat up and stretched out his arm, depositing the projector gently in the box of scrap parts. 

Kanan had sacrificed himself to destroy the TIE Defender factory, and in the process — if Thrawn could be believed — he’d given the Empire the last excuse it needed to make a weapon capable of destroying worlds.

What had Ezra done by imitating his Master? What had he accomplished by killing almost fifty thousand Imperial soldiers? If Thrawn was the type of admiral who designed an entirely new class of TIE fighter to defend his own men, to reduce unnecessary casualties, to prevent the construction of the Death Star — then what had Ezra accomplished by defeating him? What had he succeeded in, besides stranding one of the few reasonable enemies the Rebellion had, one of the few Imperial soldiers who could have potentially been turned into an ally?

Well, there was one thing he’d done, Ezra thought. He recalled the memory he’d seen in Thrawn’s mind — the image of himself as a panicked, injured child not thinking clearly, leaping free from a ship he could have saved. It seemed like the only thing he’d done successfully was exactly what he’d never intended to do when he took Thrawn’s ship.

He’d survived.

* * *

Ezra slipped into sleep not long after dark. Later, he couldn’t be sure how long he drifted, half-dreaming and half-dead in that in-between state where he could almost guide himself through semi-coherent thoughts, but couldn’t really claim to be awake.

Maybe he drifted for hours; maybe it was only minutes. Either way, eventually, something changed. 

The rain pattered against his roof, invading his sleeping mind. The wind howled, and he could hear that, too; he remembered moving the shelters, the squelch of mud beneath his boots; he worried vaguely about what would happen tomorrow, if the storms would worsen, if they’d be able to find any more fish. He wondered if—

 _Oh, that’s extraordinary,_ Vuras says. _Honestly. It reads like something a schoolmaster would write._

He holds a flat computer in his hands, something that looks like nothing more than a screen; there’s no keyboard attached to it like the datapads Ezra’s familiar with and no ports that Ezra can see. He studies something written on the screen before him in a script Ezra doesn’t understand, and then he nods approvingly and hands it back to his younger brother. _You know what I learned in school today?_ Vuras asks.

Vurawn is positively glowing, clasping the strange computer to his chest. It’s too big for his hands; he looks no older than four or five, possibly just starting school himself. 

_What did you learn?_ he asks eagerly. Then, before Vuras can answer the question, he hastens to add, _Can you check my equations after we help with the mines? Uva’nse’cha said I might test into upper levels, but I have to show him I can do the work first._

Vuras ignores this second part. _I learned how to turn people’s skin purple,_ he says, leaning forward and whispering these words in a confidential tone. 

Vurawn’s grip on the computer tightens. His eyes are wide. _Wait, really?_ he says. Vuras is holding back a tight smile as he nods. The flicker of his eyes is familiar; it indicates a puzzle or riddle, or perhaps deceit. _How?_ Vurawn demands, thinking over the potentialities. 

When Vuras punches him in the arm, he flinches back with a scandalized cry, but isn’t quite fast enough to avoid the blow. 

_There, look,_ Vuras says cheerfully, indicating the bruising spot on his brother’s bicep. _Now you’re turning purple._

The scene fades before Ezra can make out the smaller boy’s outraged reply; no other memory rises to replace it. Instead, he gets a sense of swirling thoughts, each one overlapping the next. Ruminations of real-life concerns — the funnel, and whether it will hold throughout the next week or so of storms — give way to ancient, half-forgotten to-do lists. 

Tomorrow he must review reports of the hangar bay inspection; he must oversee the coordination exercises with the rest of the Seventh Fleet, a task which will likely last into next week, especially considering the review process and the time he or Faro (most likely Faro; she’s better at it than he is) must spend soothing bruised egos amongst the ships’ captains; he must answer Senator Bail Organa’s invitation to the annual Alderaanian Solstice Ball, which is of course likely to be a far more dangerous endeavor than it seems; he is scheduled to meet with both Governor Pryce and Moff Omacri, and neither of them wishes to meet ship-side, and according to Commodore Faro he is politically obligated to meet wherever they wish. Even if it means taking a shuttle planet-side to Lothal. But with the datawork from their last piracy venture to go through as well, and without Vanto here to pore through it—

—dimly, without emotion, he realizes these concerns no longer apply. Perhaps it is Vanto’s name which makes him remember; he thinks, _I still have not selected a new aide,_ and then he realizes he does not need an aide, he does not have a ship. But in any case, his mind turns amiably to other things, a sense of mingled relief and sadness accompanying the abandoned tasks. 

Through the fog of sleep, he registers the sound of rain against the roof and for a moment he’s on Copero for the first time, trying not to let the adult officers see his awe as lightning flashes outside — and can energy like that be weaponized? he wonders. Surely if it’s occurred to _him_ so quickly, it must have already been harvested by older, sharper minds — probably centuries ago — but if so, he’s never read about it. He makes a note to mention it to the weapons officer the first chance he gets, assuming of course that she’ll listen to a new cadet as young as he is—

—and the temperatures are low enough to penetrate his sleep, reminding him of winters back on Rentor, of the festivals held each year to celebrate warmth. He remembers sitting on the shoulders of an older cousin — Rala’charca, who died in the attack — and stretching out his hands to touch the soft golden glow of an _escalfromach_ lantern hanging from the cave ceiling. He was scolded afterward — technically, what he’d done was considered theft by the upper-class commoners who organized such events — but for a full six months after that festival, he could rub the golden _escalfromach_ stains on his sleeves to reactivate it, the salt on his skin catalyzing the chemical mixture until it glowed and simultaneously emanated a comforting heat—

—but thinking of heat is never wise. His thoughts cascade against one another, bringing to mind a thousand unpleasant encounters — almost all of them from this side of the galaxy:

Human hands clasping his hair painfully and covertly at an Ascension Week party, the drunken senator not realizing where he was, what he was doing, who he was trying to intimidate. The other officers and politicians around him pretending not to see. Vanto silently telling him, with his facial expressions, not to make a fuss.

He remembers too many people crowded together at a governmental event, almost all of them flushed from alcohol, stumbling into him and then sneering as if he’s to blame. Short, stubby fingers clamped around his wrist, the human’s skin seeming to burn against his; and hot breath hissing into his ear.

 _You don’t belong here,_ the senator says.

It reminds him of Voss Parck when they first met, viewing Thrawn as little more than an alien weapon capable of elevating his status above that of his cousins in the military — of Eli Vanto and his intimidating horror stories of the Chiss — of Commodore Faro, so displeased at first to have the Imperial Navy’s notorious alien officer aboard her ship that she straddled the line daily between unhelpful and simply insubordinate. 

Perhaps she was more displeased by the amount of courts-martial under his belt than the peculiar color of his skin and eyes; he’s allowed himself to believe that’s true for years now, though he knows she doesn’t put much stock in the Imperial Military Code. He values her allyship — perhaps her friendship, but would _she_ call it that? He can never tell with humans — too much to entertain the thought that she’d disliked him purely because he’s Chiss. The same thought when it comes to Vanto almost scalds him, sets his thoughts to churning once again.

Far easier, really, to hold his acquaintances at arm’s length for a time — to create, in a sense, a viable motivation for them to dislike him, giving him reasonable doubt as to their true mental state.

He spins into a fuzzy-edged memory of the _Chimaera’s_ corridors, the bulkheads seeming to waver all around him in the strange way of dreams. Distantly, he hears the voices of a group of crewers, all of them just out of sight. 

— _follow his orders,_ says one of them. _I mean, to a reasonable extent. Just wish he wasn’t an alien._

Beside him, Commodore Faro’s posture stiffens, but even though he’s initially put off by the malice in his crewer’s tone and the obvious prejudice of his statement, it still takes Thrawn a moment to remember _he’s_ the alien in question. He doesn’t let the realization affect his stride. He has heard far worse since entering the Empire, but it seems more piercing now, from his own men — aboard his own ship. 

Worse, when they come into view, he recognizes them from their annual performance evaluations — the man who spoke is competent, admirably hard-working, a natural leader for his sector. The enlisted personnel gathered around him are similarly high performers, a mix of excellent athletes and superb minds. The _Chimaera’s_ best and brightest.

If he has to choose between competent or kind, of course, he chooses competent every time. He walks past the whispering crewers without a word of admonishment; a subtle twitching of his left hand commands Faro to do the same thing—

And one memory swirled into the next, hazy thoughts of the present mixing in with the past. It wasn’t like anything Ezra experienced during the day; Thrawn’s mind now was as open and expressive as a well-formatted holofilm, every minor thought beckoning Ezra in closer, urging him to get a better look. It felt raw and vulnerable, every thought and emotion on display, unguarded. He pulled away from it all with great reluctance, pulling himself back into the waking world and leaving the immersive experience of Thrawn’s mind behind.

In his shelter, the sounds of the world encroached on him again, now heard fully with his own ears rather than the muted sensations he’d heard through Thrawn. Tentatively, Ezra stretched out with the Force — deliberately this time — and got an almost visual sense of Thrawn in the other shelter, his woven mattress tucked into the far corner, his legs bent up and his body turned to face the wall. He was still fast asleep, his mind evidently reaching out or connecting to Ezra’s of its own volition — seeking contact subconsciously in the night. 

It was a strange concept to mull over — no stranger, though, than the disconcertingly negative tint to Thrawn’s sleeping thoughts, which seemed only one shade away from nightmares. Pulling away, Ezra confined himself to the dull physical sensations from the other hut — the slight chill; the ache of Thrawn’s hands, pressed uncomfortably against the shelter wall as he slept, like he was calling Ezra closer and simultaneously pushing him away.

And then, gradually, Ezra let that image go as well, too exhausted to puzzle any of it out.

It would keep till morning, he decided. Hell, it would keep till eternity for all he cared.

He brought a barricade down between his mind and Thrawn’s, not even thinking about it, and went back to sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn gives Ezra a very specific task.

The sky lightened from the deep black of night to a menacing grey by morning, and it never got lighter from there. At noon, the air was almost as cold as it had been in winter when they first crashed, but the rain at least had died down to nothing more than a drizzle. It was then that Thrawn and Ezra emerged from their shelters, with Thrawn still clad in his damp trousers from the day before, his _oth’ola endzali_ shining a dull silver against the blue of his chest; his eyes swept over Ezra and the too-big shirt he’d taken without comment.

“You, uh, you left some stuff in my room,” Ezra said, pointing over his shoulder at the shelter. “You want to switch out before it gets worse?”

“No,” said Thrawn. He was scanning the trees around them, paying particular attention to a natural-looking nearby shelf made up of thin slabs of rock. “We can transfer our belongings later,” Thrawn said distractedly. “Right now we should construct a fireplace protected from the rain; something more substantial than the weather canopy — can you lift those slabs?”

Briefly, Ezra wondered if that was some sort of trick question. He’d spent hours yesterday transporting their shelters and woodshed over a thousand meters through untamed woods, and Thrawn wanted to know if he could lift a few thin slabs of rock? But Thrawn seemed to be genuinely asking; there was a calculating look in his eyes, and Ezra remembered the memories they’d gone over last night and felt his gut twist.

He reached out with the Force; the rocks trembled in his grasp and then rose, hovering several meters in the air. Thrawn nodded, silently directing Ezra to move the stones closer to the shelters. 

So apparently, he was trying to see how frequently Ezra could use the Force before exhaustion set in — and luckily, he had a valid excuse to do so, since it wasn’t like they had time to build a pulley and lever system. Still, it both rankled and embarrassed Ezra; the two feelings mixed together and sank deep into his stomach, becoming something more akin to shame. This he buried as far down as he could, determined to ignore it.

They worked in silence for the most part, Thrawn adjusting the slabs by hand as Ezra lay them down where he was directed to. The new fireplace was unsteady but workable, the walls kept standing mostly through the clever placement of other rocks. They got the fire going quickly, throwing fish from their transported stores onto the spits.

The rain picked up while they waited for the fish to cook. Ezra retreated to the entrance of his shelter, standing under the weather canopy while Thrawn — already shirtless and not entirely dried out from the night before — stayed where he was. After a moment, glancing up at the still-darkening sky, Ezra decided to swap their belongings before things got worse. 

He placed the boxes of clothes and scrap parts in Thrawn’s shelter, ultra-cognizant of the holoprojector as he moved. The rain thudded loudly against the roof of Thrawn’s hut, like it had picked up again just in the short time it took Ezra to move from one door to the next. He rooted around for his own things and stood there a moment with the open box in his hands, trying to figure out if he could move them now without getting every single item of clothing soaked.

He was still standing there puzzling it out when the door opened and Thrawn ducked through, carrying the spits in his hands. He kicked the door shut behind him and leaned against it for a moment, palming water out of his eyes. Wordlessly, he handed Ezra one of the fish — still steaming from the fire — and walked past him, folding himself onto the thin woven mattress on the floor. He didn't bother to dry off first, Ezra noticed with distaste.

Thrawn held the spit away from his body, using his free hand to wipe the remaining rainwater off his face. There were streaks of dirt on his arms and hands from their work with the fireplace; one small blot of soot left a discolored spot under his eye, probably transferred there when he wiped the water off his face with dirty hands. It was difficult to see the man before him as the same Grand Admiral Ezra had fought so desperately. 

“Stay a moment,” Thrawn said evenly. He leaned far to the side, holding the spit up and away while he reached for a nearby wooden box. With one hand, he lifted an orderly pile of rough-hewn plates and utensils, balancing it on his palm. Ezra floated one of the forks to himself, using it to push the fish off of his spit. 

He didn’t particularly feel like going out into the rain, especially now that it was pouring, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled about being cooped up inside with Thrawn, either. He sat down on one of the nearby boxes, this one full of nets, and angled his body toward the window and away from Thrawn as he ate. 

“You stationed a ship in high orbit over Lothal,” Thrawn said without preamble, “and from there signaled the purrgils. Is that correct?”

Ezra blinked, the fish going dry in his mouth. He thumped his chest to make it go down, suddenly regretting that he’d left his canteen in his own shelter. “Uh, yeah,” he said eventually, his shoulders hunched and his voice rasping. “Why?”

Although he’d retrieved enough utensils for both of them, Thrawn didn’t seem interested in using them. He picked the fish apart with his fingers but didn’t eat any of it, his eyes thoughtful and distant. Without glancing at Ezra directly, he held his canteen out for the Jedi to use.

“A flock of purrgils just outside the planet’s atmosphere would surely draw attention from any nearby civilizations,” Thrawn said, apparently thinking out loud. “But I believe that may be counterproductive to our goals; the purrgils would almost certainly kidnap any would-be rescuers, just as they kidnapped us. Assuming, of course, that they are hyperspace-capable and therefore equipped with the proper fuel. That may be technically a victory in the long run if our rescuers happen to be Grysks, but it would do nothing to fulfill our short-term goal of escaping this planet. Still, to build a high-power transmitter is much simpler than to build a spacecraft from scratch, particularly when we have been unable to salvage a single functional or reparable hyperdrive or navigation system.”

He rested his chin on his hands, absently stroking a scrape on his jaw from the night before as he thought it through. “Without knowing the location of other planets in the vicinity,” he said, “it will be difficult to know where precisely to place our transmitter — but the north side of this forest seems a good choice.”

Ezra sat up a little straighter, his nose wrinkling. “The north side?” he said, certain Thrawn must have misspoken. 

“We do not want the purrgils taking our potential rescuers into hyperspace,” Thrawn reminded him. “As such it seems wise to base our signal where we know they have previously lost control.”

Ezra’s gut twisted. “We’d cause more crashes,” he said. Thrawn shook his head once, without hesitation.

“I don’t think so. They are intelligent creatures; if we summon the same purrgils which brought us here, they will certainly remember where they lost control. And if we summon different purrgils, which is more likely, you must remember that this time, they will be here _first_ , before any ships arrive — and as such, they will be unable to establish control over the ships in the first place, meaning our rescuers or enemies will never come into any danger.” His eyes flickered up to Ezra thoughtfully. “How well can you control the purrgils?”

Ezra grimaced, averting his eyes. 

“I see,” said Thrawn.

“Well, I’m not _hopeless_ ,” said Ezra, suddenly feeling defensive. “I just — it’s not like doing a simple mind trick, you know? I can maybe convince them to go in a certain direction, but I can’t tell them to, you know, bring me to Naboo or anything like that.”

Thrawn gave another absent nod. He seemed to notice his picked-apart fish for the first time and glanced around for his fork, finally taking a small bite. It had to be cold by now, Ezra thought; he wrapped his arms around himself and edged closer to the window. They’d covered it up the night before with a tightly-woven canopy, but it was simple enough to untie one corner and peek outside; rain poured down in sheets, needling off the ground with massive vertical splashes. 

“What are you thinking?” Ezra asked. His own voice sounded odd to his ears — peculiarly serious and hushed. “Use the purrgils to drag ships into that dead zone — or whatever it is — so that it crashes and other ships come to the rescue? I mean, let’s say we lure some ships here just because they see the purrgils, right? If they don’t fly over the dead zone on their own, how do we even make them land? And _besides_ that, if they do fly over that zone, then they’re gonna crash and the ship will be useless to us anyway.”

Thrawn gave him an odd look. “The dead zone disables purrgils, not ships,” he said. “Without some other unpredictable contributing factor, I see no reason why a rescuer should not simply continue flying. Remember, we cannot predict who will respond to our signal; we should assume anyone arriving here is a potential ally until they show otherwise.”

“The dead zone disables _purrgils_?” Ezra repeated. “How the hell do you know that?”

This time, the look Thrawn threw him was vaguely exasperated. He set his fish aside and leaned forward, dragging the box of spare parts toward him. “This comlink,” he said, digging through the box and placing the comm in Ezra’s hand, “still searches for a signal in the so-called dead zone, although its range is too weak to lock onto anything out here. The holoprojector — which uses a compact version of the same power cells installed on an Imperial Star Destroyer or a TIE Defender — still functions flawlessly. This anti-resonance plate—” He extricated a dull-grey sheet of misshapen metal. “—still functions as well. There is nothing in the dead zone which interferes with an Imperial Star Destroyer’s communications array, shields, or power. As such, the problem was not with the _Chimaera_ ; it was with the purrgils.”

There was an unmistakable challenge in Thrawn’s tone — a fierce streak of pride in his ship that Ezra wasn’t interested in arguing with. He took a closer look at the anti-resonance plate and felt it humming against his hand. When he passed it back to Thrawn, he was biting his lip, deep in thought.

“Something dark?” Ezra suggested. “Some sort of Sith artefact on the planet’s surface, maybe — it could have spooked them so bad that they fled.”

“Remember they lingered less than five hundred meters away,” Thrawn said, tucking the anti-resonance plate back into the box.

“Mourning their dead, maybe,” Ezra said. “Remember, one of the purrgils was crushed beneath the ship.”

He caught a subtle flicker of unidentifiable emotion from Thrawn’s mind. When Ezra looked closer, he felt a strange sensation — like the channel between them was widening. Like he was being wordlessly invited in. He took a step farther into Thrawn’s mind, experienced a brief sense-memory: His limbs exhausted and heavy after a long week with practically zero sleep and as much hard labor as any man could do — his foot snagging on a piece of debris hidden beneath the snow — his hands coming down on what looks like a log in the darkness, only for the skin of the log to give way, leaving him wrist-deep in rotting purrgil meat, congealed blood and animal fat splattering up against his face, the smell affecting him so badly that for a moment he’s dizzy from it, thinks he might faint. 

This wasn’t territory Ezra wanted to re-tread. He pulled away from Thrawn’s mind and gazed out the window at the rain, pretending to be unaffected. 

Thrawn’s eyes were burning into him.

“For now,” he said, “I believe we should build a high-power transmitter; with your Force bolstering its signal, we have a fair chance of reaching somebody, though we don’t know yet who. But before then…” 

His eyes swiveled, following Ezra’s gaze — looking out the window at the rain.

“...we must first weather the storm,” he said.

* * *

With enough preserved food to last them through the rain and no other chores to tend to, Ezra and Thrawn spent the next several days focused entirely on training. It was a miserable time for Ezra; he imagined it was even more so for Thrawn.

For some reason, Thrawn’s training-induced headaches were back. Ezra noticed the signs the first day, but he didn’t know for sure what was wrong until the second — there was a subtle line between Thrawn’s eyebrows, a stiff cant to his head, a sort of tension across his shoulders every time they trained. Once, after Ezra pulled out from a particularly mundane memory of Thrawn as a lieutenant — scrubbing the deck of some puny Imperial cruiser, of all things — he caught Thrawn taking a sharp breath, clutching the _oth’ola endzali_ around his neck as if by reflex. 

The thing was, all the signs that Ezra picked up on were only _outward_ signs. He was in Thrawn’s mind for hours that day, sometimes sitting in the same shelter, sometimes separated by thin walls and a sheet of rain — and never once did he pick up on pain signals inside Thrawn’s brain. It was like he’d suddenly, inexplicably taken three huge steps back. The subtle flickers of emotion across Thrawn’s mind were gone again, like Ezra had never uncovered them in the first place, and it seemed like the other man’s memories and physical sensations grew more and more remote each time Ezra looked inside.

Was it their discussion of the purrgils that had changed things? Ezra couldn’t suss out any reason why it should be; if anything, discussing their strategy like that — discussing the Grysks, making plans for the future — should have made things easier, not pulled up a barricade between them. Ezra couldn’t figure it out, and Thrawn certainly wasn’t about to bring it up; he seemed determined not to acknowledge the signal loss.

On the second day, Thrawn gave him a specific assignment to complete:

“Look into my mind,” he said over breakfast, “and find the name of my aide.”

For a moment, this sentence simply didn’t make any sense to Ezra. It took him a moment to parse it out. “Your _aide_?” he said. “Like an assistant?”

Thrawn, for some inexplicable reason, looked faintly annoyed at that comment. Rather than directly answer Ezra’s question, he visibly controlled his irritation and said, quite patiently, “Are you unsure of the definition?”

“No,” said Ezra, resisting the urge to roll his eyes — but only because Thrawn had clearly just done the same thing. “Forget it. So you want me to just, what, root through your mind until I find this guy’s name?”

“Yes,” said Thrawn. He was sitting on a closed box in Ezra’s shelter, arms folded over his chest, hair wet from the short walk over. 

“You were a Grand Admiral, though,” said Ezra. “You must’ve had like twenty aides!”

Thrawn shrugged slightly, running his thumb along the scabbed line of a cut on his forehead. “Find the correct one.”

Ezra sighed through his nose. “What’s even the point of this?”

The look Thrawn gave him was one of sharp rebuke. “You’ve forgotten the tactical uses of mind-reading?”

Exasperated, Ezra shook his head. “I don’t see the point in reading your mind for the name of some random assistant! What possible good does that do me?”

“You will think of a few potential uses,” said Thrawn, “if you apply yourself.”

Ezra glared at him — though he didn’t really expect a glare to have much effect. Thrawn just met his eyes steadily, like he always did. After a long silence where it became clear Ezra wasn’t going to guess, Thrawn said, without a change in tone, “Let’s assume I am your enemy.”

Ezra gave him a dry look at that and got a faintly sheepish nod in response.

“For example,” Thrawn continued, “let’s say you have captured an enemy ship. My uniform identifies me as the commanding officer, so you interrogate me first — but I am an alien, and you have difficulty reading my mind, yes? You could interrogate each of my officers in turn, hoping to assemble through them the information you could extract from me. Or you could be more efficient — what _I_ know, my aide knows. Military officers are not likely to reveal personal connections or individual responsibilities to an enemy, but if you can read my mind just enough to extract the name and face of my aide, you can interrogate them instead, saving precious time in the process. In my case this would be particularly helpful, as I am—”

His face spasmed, a movement so quick that Ezra almost missed it.

“—was the only alien officer aboard my ship,” Thrawn finished, his mouth twisting. He touched the scab on his forehead again, running the edge of his thumbnail alongside it. If it hurt or itched, Ezra couldn’t tell; he got no indication of it from Thrawn’s mind.

“My aide was human, and as you are also human, it is likely his mind would be simpler for you to read,” Thrawn said. “Even on an all-alien ship, it is generally true — _generally_ , but it depends on the military culture — that commanding officers have stronger minds than their aides, although it is also true that every strong mind must start at the bottom rung of the ladder and work its way up. In any case, it will be easier for you to find the information you need in an aide’s mind rather than the commanding officer’s.”

Ezra sat down on his bed, arms crossed. He had to admit — begrudgingly — it made some sense, though only if he were in a time crunch in this hypothetical situation. Otherwise, there was no reason he couldn’t interrogate _everyone_.

Other than lack of talent, he thought with a wince. It was still a struggle to read thoughts from Thrawn’s mind, unless Thrawn blatantly invited him in and translated memories to Basic for him, or if he was asleep — so it was a little silly to pretend Ezra was capable of reading _anybody’s_ mind well enough to find tactically vital information. 

Still, if Thrawn was willing to pretend, Ezra wasn’t going to stop him. He closed his eyes and settled back into a comfortable position, letting the Force open up his mind. The channel formed slowly, painstakingly, with more effort than it had taken in several days — like something had changed between them, making this even more difficult than before.

Twenty minutes passed with nothing but the sound of the rain and faint movements from Thrawn as he rifled through boxes and shifted in place. The connection wavered, straining and twisting, nothing getting through. As time passed, Ezra’s mind drifted, seeking the connection on autopilot while his thoughts went elsewhere.

With his eyes closed, he heard the faint scratch of a knife on wood and inexplicably thought of the _Chimaera_ ; a sharp pang went through his chest, photos from Kana Pyrondi’s holoprojector dashing through the channel and searing into his brain cells. He sat up abruptly, eyes popping open, and immediately knew the connection had been lost.

Across from him, Thrawn’s head was down, his eyes fixed on a small piece of wood he was whittling into the shape of a four-legged animal — apparently he’d run out of useful chores he could do inside while it rained. He glanced up at Ezra, completely expressionless, and Ezra hesitated. Suddenly he couldn’t tell for sure if those images of Pyrondi had come from him or from Thrawn; had it been his own memories that had flooded the channel and distracted him so much?

Casting his eyes down again, Thrawn pressed his thumb against the blade and chipped down at the rough-hewn little beast, forming the sharp angle of its neck. “Try again,” he said. 

Ezra frowned at him, eyes lingering over the half-carved wooden block. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Trying to make Dejarik pieces or something? There’s no _lizard_ in Dejarik.”

“Concentrate,” said Thrawn, flicking a wood chip Ezra’s way. “You’ve lost the connection; I can feel that you’ve drifted away.”

He used the knife to gesture to his temple, but Ezra was already waving his hand dismissively. “I got it, I got it. I just lost the signal, okay?” Eyes closed, he reached out to the Force until he caught the thin, gossamer lines of Thrawn’s mind. “...aaaand we got it,” Ezra mumbled, his voice coming from very far away.

The vast network of Thrawn’s mind seemed like nothing more than a few flickering nodes in a dark hall; everywhere he looked, Ezra caught glimpses of ciphers and impenetrable equations, but nothing more. He pictured himself as a physical body taking tentative, small steps into the void, his feet coming down on utter darkness, searching for a vine he could grab hold of and use to pull himself forward until he found an access point — a single coherent thought — anything at all.

In the darkness like this, Thrawn’s mind seemed horribly familiar, and it didn’t take Ezra long at all to figure out what it reminded him of — it looked just like the World Between Worlds. The only difference was that here, the paths were muted, the doorways darkened and leading nowhere except the past. There was nothing here Ezra could change. He could only observe.

And that was only if he could find a memory to observe in the first place.

He held his hand out ahead of him, palm down and fingers curled, and in time he started to imagine he could feel something — something light, like the brush of a spiderweb — against his skin. He closed his fingers around it gently, feared for a moment that it might have evaporated because he moved too soon. Then he felt it lingering there, a strand of consciousness within his grasp.

Now if he could only figure out how to read it. Why was this sometimes so easy, so intuitive, and other times so difficult? Had Thrawn really been spoon-feeding him memories this whole time?

Or did it have something to do with _him_ — with those pictures on Pyrondi’s holoprojector, with that memory he’d seen of himself abandoning the _Chimaera_ before it crashed, with his new knowledge of the Death Star and the image he had in his mind of Kanan, engulfed by the fire?

He turned his hands over carefully, examining the thread lying against his palm. It shimmered the same silver-blue as Thrawn’s _oth’ola endzali,_ standing out stark against the utter blackness all around him. It was beautiful — or at least intriguing — but the longer Ezra stared at it, the more frustrated he got. What the hell was he supposed to do with this? He kept following it, one foot after the other with the thread sliding between his hands, but it led him nowhere — only farther into the dark. He tried to open it up, to peel back the outside layer to see what was inside, but the thread was too nebulous to pull apart; he couldn’t even be sure it _was_ a thought. Maybe what he’d caught was just some sort of Force-manifestation of a synapse firing inside Thrawn’s brain. 

_Well, so what if it is?_ Ezra wondered. Maybe that was all he was doing when he read Thrawn’s mind — using the Force to pick apart those chemical signals, translating them into a format his own mind could understand. But why wasn’t it working now?

He squeezed the thread in his hands and watched it disintegrate. A moment later, so abruptly it gave him whiplash, he was back in the shelter and Thrawn was sitting across from him, drawing back from his whittling knife in a flinch. A line of blood welled up on the web of skin between Thrawn’s forefinger and thumb; he stared at it a moment before standing and unfastening the window cover, sticking his injured hand out into the rain.

As if he felt Ezra’s eyes on him, he said, “The knife slipped.”

Ezra glanced back at the little wooden lizard. It was still rough, but he must have spent a long time in Thrawn’s mind; the entire body had now been sketched out from head to tail. Thrawn’s blood had soaked into the wood, leaving a small discolored stain that was already closer to brown than red. 

“I couldn’t see anything,” he told Thrawn. 

“Yes,” said Thrawn, pulling back from the window and drying his hand on a nearby rag. The bleeding had stopped already; he didn’t bother to bandage it before re-taking his seat. “I noticed.”

“You noticed?” Ezra repeated, his eyebrows furrowing. “How?”

For a moment, Thrawn was silent. As Ezra’s eyes tracked over him, he noticed a little wrinkle across the bridge of Thrawn’s nose, a muscle jumping in his jaw — signs of tension he’d grown to recognize over the past fifty-four days.

“I typically relive the same memories you access as you are accessing them,” Thrawn said eventually, examining the bloodstain on his whittling project. He brushed his thumb over it, but the stain remained unchanged. “Just now, I relived nothing, nor did I have any peculiar or overwhelming thoughts. I assumed you were having little success.”

True enough, Ezra thought with a scowl. He shook his arms out, trying to force some energy into himself despite the enervating downpour outside. Thrawn glanced at him briefly and then bent his head again, already back to his carving, waiting for Ezra to get on with it.

With a deep breath, Ezra jumped in. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra's relationship to the Force becomes a bit of a problem.

If there was one thing to comfort him after hours of training, it was that he could at least always find the thread. It was the same one each time — he learned to recognize it by his third try — and it was drawn to him as if by instinct, as if the Force lured it right to Ezra’s hands. Or deposited him exactly where he needed to be to find it.

That was an advantage, Ezra knew — to be dropped right into the enemy’s mind at the exact position he needed, without having to search around for hours looking for a thread he wasn’t sure how to find. But hell if he knew how to _work_ that advantage. 

On each attempt, the thread stayed in his hands, leading him nowhere, never opening up. It vibrated against his palm, glowing silver-blue — sometimes cold, sometimes so hot he could barely keep hold of it. He coaxed it with the Force, trying to persuade the thread to unbraid itself, trying to convince the minuscule knots in it to loosen.

But nothing happened. Each attempt stretched out longer and longer, until Ezra was spending full hours inside Thrawn’s mind with this thread in his hands, a tension headache tightening around his skull like a metal band. During this time, he was like a blind and deaf man, disconnected from everything except the glowing thread; he had no sense of Thrawn’s physical sensations or thoughts, no way of telling whether Thrawn was still whittling or if he was even in the shelter with him. 

When he came out of Thrawn’s mind for the last time, the sky outside was pitch-black, and he couldn’t tell whether it was nighttime or if the storm clouds had simply thickened. His limbs trembled, weak from exhaustion even though he’d been sitting on his bed unmoving for hours now; the shelter rattled around him, buffeted by wind and rain.

And across from him, Thrawn held a stained rag to his nose and examined the fully-finished wooden figure in his hands. It wasn’t the lizard; when Ezra’s eyes tracked over the room, he found that particular figure sitting on a shelf that had been dislodged during their move and now rested on the floor. Beside the lizard was what appeared to be a tiny stack of TIE fighters all wedged together in a cube-shaped wooden frame. How Thrawn had gotten them inside the frame, Ezra didn’t know; their wooden wings poked out from the bars, so it wasn’t like he could have carved them separately and then wedged them inside. The item in Thrawn’s hands now was a complex chain of wooden links, each one connected seamlessly to the next.

He glanced up and met Ezra’s stare; there was a bruised look to each of the faint red lines beneath Thrawn’s eyes. He held Ezra’s gaze for a long moment before looking down, removing the rag from his nose to check if he was still bleeding.

He was. Ezra could tell before Thrawn’s fingertips came away stained with red; he could see how bright the blood was from where he sat and knew from experience that if it was so vividly red at this point, that meant it was still fresh. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his arms and legs aching at the joints — and if _he_ felt this bad, how awful must Thrawn feel?

He thought back over the discussion they’d had only a week before — the Dark Side vs. the Light Side; the memory of Palpatine’s interrogation drifted into his head, bringing with it a ghost sensation of the agony that had sent Thrawn to his knees. At least what Ezra had done didn’t seem _quite_ so harmful — there was the nosebleed, yes, and from where he sat he could see shallow cuts covering both of Thrawn’s hands, probably caused by Thrawn flinching as he held his knife. But he hadn’t stopped whittling throughout the experiment, except maybe to tend to chores — Ezra had no way of knowing whether he’d done that or not — so at least he knew he hadn’t reached Palpatine-levels of torture.

Small comfort, he reflected, eyeing the smudged spots of blood on Thrawn’s sleeves. Across from him, Thrawn folded the rag over delicately and applied a clean spot to his nose.

“The name?” he asked Ezra, his voice muffled and more nasal than usual.

“Uh…” said Ezra. He rubbed the back of his neck, reluctantly meeting Thrawn’s eyes again. “I couldn’t get it.”

“A lot of effort for no results,” Thrawn commented, his tone completely neutral. He leaned over, setting the rough wooden chain down on the same shelf as the lizard and TIE fighters. “What are you doing differently?”

 _“Me_?” Ezra said, a sharp pain shooting right through his temples. He blinked at Thrawn, flabbergasted. “What are _you_ doing differently?” he shot back. “Normally, I can read your thoughts with no problem, and suddenly I’ve got nothing! No physical sensations, no thoughts or memories, no emotional state — it’s a completely empty, dark room inside your head, dude. There’s nothing there but this one little glowing thread, and that doesn’t lead me _anywhere_. I can’t get into it, I can’t follow it to a memory, I can’t make it, like, open up…” 

He jerked his hands up in a futile gesture, frustration stealing his words. Thrawn stared at him placidly through the outburst, not interrupting, his facial expression unwavering. 

“Things have changed for you,” Thrawn said.

“No _shit_ they’ve changed—”

“I don’t mean this,” Thrawn said, pointing between them as if to indicate the mental channel Ezra had opened up between their minds. “Your inability to read my mind is a symptom of some other malady. Until you resolve those issues, you will consistently fail — and you will continue to cause strain to both yourself and me.” He put the rag back against his nose, wiping gingerly at the blood starting to crust there. For some reason, this gesture more than anything else caused Ezra’s anger to spike; he sat up straight on his bed, glowering at Thrawn, a dull ache suffusing his entire body.

“The issue’s with _me_?” he asked. “That’s what you’re saying? I just want to make _absolutely_ sure that’s what you meant to say.”

It was hard to tell, since he didn’t have any visible pupils, but it looked like Thrawn might have rolled his eyes. “I am not deliberately obscuring my thoughts and memories,” he said. “No more than I typically do for these exercises.”

“So, what, I’m just supposed to believe my brain is suddenly broken?” Ezra asked. He could hear sarcasm dripping into his tone, but he couldn’t seem to stop it. “Or is it the Force, Thrawn? Did the Force stop working while I was looking the other way?”

Thrawn gave him a strange, sharp look at that. After a beat of silence, he seemed to recalibrate and said, “Of course the Force is _working_.” He gestured at his bleeding nose, as if that settled the matter. “I felt the evidence of that quite strongly. What’s damaged is your _relationship_ to the Force.”

This hit eerily close to home; it sounded too similar to something Kanan might say. Ezra turned to the window with a shaky scoff, suddenly thrown off-balance and trying to mask it. “Suddenly you know all about the Force, huh?” he said.

The ensuing silence was long and suffocating, allowing Ezra nothing to focus on but the static hiss of rain outside and the creaking of wind against the shelter walls. He crossed his arms across his chest and knew — though he wouldn’t admit it — that he was doing it for a sense of warmth and comfort, not because he was mad. 

Eventually, he heard Thrawn shifting behind him, the box he was sitting on scraping across the floor. He sensed footsteps approaching him and turned around just as Thrawn said, “Look.”

The _oth’ola endzali_ was untied, its leather cord lying loose in Thrawn’s palm. He held the pendant out to Ezra with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“What?” asked Ezra, refusing to take the _oth’ola endzali_. Thrawn kept his hand outstretched, likewise refusing to take it back.

“I am not Force-sensitive,” Thrawn said, his tone strangely heavy. “And I never have been. But my brother was, and this wayfinder is imbued with his life energy. You know this.”

Reluctantly, Ezra nodded. He stared at the _oth’ola endzali_ as if it might bite him.

“I cannot connect to the Force,” said Thrawn, “therefore I cannot be said to have a _relationship_ with the Force. Perhaps because of that, my wayfinder rarely changes. So long as I am wearing it, it projects a sense of calm — as you also know, since you have felt it yourself. However…” 

His eyes drifted away, staring into the past — as if remembering something years away but still painful. 

“However,” he started again, “I have occasionally loaned this pendant to Force-sensitive children who were too overwhelmed to function. In almost every case, the child sensed Thrass’s life energy and was comforted by it. But in one situation out of dozens, the child was not comforted at all. The metal scalded her and Thrass’s life energy somehow amplified her already negative emotional state; rather than find her equilibrium, she was knocked off-balance and remained upset to some degree or another for roughly eight months afterward.”

Ezra stared down at the pendant, the unassuming, tarnished metal looking cool against Thrawn’s skin. When he glanced up again, Thrawn’s red eyes were searing into him, his face hard.

“I say eight months,” Thrawn said, his tone flinty, “because eight months later, she was dead. She navigated her ship directly and _deliberately_ into an asteroid belt, with no survivors. I believe her relationship to the Force was not ideal; perhaps you would say she had fallen to the Dark Side. Whatever the case, this wayfinder responded to that, noticed somehow the deterioration of her relationship to the Force.”

He took a step closer, taking one of Ezra’s hands in his and pushing the _oth’ola endzali_ into his palm. Ezra jerked back, flinching away from the pendant by instinct, but felt his fingers closing around it against his will. The metal was cool to the touch for just an instant — then, so quickly Ezra didn’t have time to react, it was red-hot, so hot he felt sure it must be melting through his skin. He yelped, fingers clutching tighter around the pendant, and sunk to his knees.

At the same time, Thrawn grabbed his wrist in an iron grip and peeled Ezra’s fingers apart, plucking the _oth’ola endzali_ out of his now-injured hand. Eyes squeezed shut, water leaking from the corners, Ezra almost didn’t notice that the pendant didn’t burn Thrawn when he touched it; it must have gone cool again as soon as Thrawn took it away.

Shaking from the pain, Ezra uncurled his fist and stared at the perfect circle of blistered skin on his palm. “Is that … is that what it did to that girl?” he hissed, teeth clenched. Thrawn knelt down beside him and took Ezra’s wrist again — gently, this time — to look at the wound.

“Yes,” he said. “More or less.”

He ran his thumb over the burn, making Ezra wince. “So my relationship to the Force is….” 

He couldn’t make himself finish the sentence. Thrawn examined the wound a moment longer, frown lines wreathing his eyes.

“You’ll need to wash it,” he said, pushing to his feet and gesturing vaguely at the open window. “An infection would be suboptimal out here.”

Ezra grimaced. No shit — in fifty-four days, he and Thrawn had probably amassed at least the same amount of small injuries altogether, and infection was always the first concern to pop into Ezra’s mind. He was highly cognizant of the lack of bacta or even more primitive first-aid measures; all that had been lost to the shipwreck. 

He held his injured hand out the window, a muscle in his cheek jumping as rain arrowed down onto his wound. He could hear Thrawn shuffling through the wooden boxes and shelves arrayed in the shelter, and by the time he turned around, there was a small wooden bowl being brandished right in his face.

“Dude,” Ezra said, leaning back so the bowl wouldn’t hit him in the nose. “Personal space.”

“Use this,” said Thrawn, backing off a little but keeping the bowl outstretched. “It’s a bitternut salve.”

“Bitternut…?” Cautiously, Ezra took the bowl, unscrewing the little wooden lid. Inside was a pale green substance that looked a little like a lotion and smelled … well, awful. He squinted up at Thrawn, unwilling to try the salve. “You found this on the _Chimaera_?” he asked.

“I made it,” said Thrawn evenly. “It is not as effective as bacta, but it has some antibacterial properties.”

“You made it?” Ezra repeated. “Here?”

“Yes,” said Thrawn, one eyebrow ever-so-slightly raised.

“Well, then, it’s not really _bitternut_ , is it?” Ezra said, sliding the lid back into place. Thrawn accepted the bowl without any sort of argument, dipping his fingers into the salve.

“It is bitternut,” he said. “You might not have noticed during winter, when most of the vegetation was dead, but there are many plants and trees here which must have been imported from other worlds. More evidence that a society once thrived here — and it isn’t toxic. Watch.” 

He spread the salve over his own open cuts, his face impassive. Ezra moved closer, watching carefully for any signs of poison — steam rising from acid-eaten skin, perhaps, or sores opening up like potholes, or sudden discoloration and decay. Thrawn stood there, allowing Ezra to examine his hand until he was satisfied. 

“Fine,” Ezra said, taking the little bowl back. He cradled it in the crook of his arm as he applied salve to the burn, wincing as the creamy substance settled in and stung over the blistered edges of his skin. The pain was intense enough that he felt like he was being burned all over again, but he grit his teeth and kept his eyes open until it faded away, when he handed the bowl back to Thrawn. 

Thrawn adjusted the lid absently, his eyes far away. Instead of putting the salve back in its box, he held it in his hands with his thumbs pressing down on the lid; he didn’t seem to notice he was still holding it. When he finally moved, he slid the salve gently back into one of the wooden boxes and straightened up again, his free hand going automatically to the _oth’ola endzali_ around his neck. 

“Which memory unsettled you?” he asked. 

Ezra folded himself onto the thin mattress, his arms wrapped protectively around his middle. He kept the palm of his right hand a few centimeters away from his clothes, careful not to brush his burn wound against anything.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “I didn’t see any memories, remember? It was just that stupid thread.”

“Not today,” said Thrawn patiently. “The last time you successfully picked through my mind, you uncovered multiple memories. Since then, you haven’t been able to uncover anything — even the name of my aide. Something you saw inside my mind must have damaged your relationship to the Force — if we figure out which memory triggered a negative reaction, perhaps—”

“Dude, literally every single memory I saw was _damaging_ ,” Ezra cut in. “I mean, how the hell did you _think_ I was gonna react? First I get to see the _Chimaera_ literally _exploding_ as it hits the ground, then I get to see you holding somebody’s _severed_ _arm_ , then I find out this planet isn’t even _deserted_ — I mean, take your pick! There’s like fifteen traumatizing experiences packed together into every single one of those!”

Thrawn sat on one of the overturned wooden boxes, clasping his chin in his hand as he thought. “Tell me the Jedi tenets again,” he requested. 

It took Ezra a moment to recalibrate and process this request — he forced himself to dial down the exasperation and anger he’d allowed to build up. _Jedi tenets,_ Thrawn said — Ezra was pretty sure he and Thrawn had never gone over the Jedi ‘tenets’ in the first place. “You mean, like the Jedi code?” he asked.

Thrawn nodded and waved his hand in a circular get-on-with-it motion. With a sigh and a somewhat dramatic roll of his eyes, Ezra recited:

“ _There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no_ —” His mouth went dry. He hoped Thrawn didn’t notice the slight stammer on this word. “— _no death, there is the Force._ ”

Thrawn only gazed at him, face blank, as if he expected Ezra to go on.

“That’s it,” said Ezra awkwardly.

“There is another version, isn’t there?” Thrawn said, tilting his head to the side. “I have heard it before, though only once. _Emotion, yet peace — ignorance, yet knowledge_ — and so on. That’s quite the different implication, isn’t it? It suggests both emotion and peace, chaos and harmony, death and the Force, coexist rather than supplant each other, as your version suggests.”

“There is no _my_ version,” said Ezra; he could hear how peeved he sounded, and that just irritated him more. “This is just straight-up the Jedi Code. People don’t have their own individual versions of the Code.”

“How do you know?” Thrawn countered.

“How do _you_ know?” Ezra countered back, much less politely. “You make any visits to a Jedi Temple recently? Did I somehow miss the memory where _you_ were a Padawan?”

Thrawn didn’t seem to take offense. His eyes were fixed on the open window, watching the rain pour down. “Perhaps it is a simplified version taught to younglings,” he said. “It _is_ your religion, so you should know better than I do. But you came across it in an unusual way. You were old enough when you began your training to skip over simplified versions. However, it seems to me the _simplified_ version of the Code implies a more complex relationship to the Force… unless this is simply an archaic version of Basic I’m not familiar with.”

He looked a question at Ezra, who only shrugged. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Ancient Basic isn’t actually all that ancient, you know. It’s only been around a few thousand years so it pretty much just sounds like — you know, like ‘the Force be with _ye’_ instead of ‘be with _you_.’”

“In that case,” said Thrawn, “my theory is that both versions were used — although we may never know exactly why — and as such, both versions are valid. What do you think?”

“I think you’re remembering it wrong,” said Ezra bluntly. “That or you’re just plain making it up.”

“I am not remembering it wrong,” said Thrawn with what seemed to Ezra like a hint of annoyance underneath a thick layer of patience. “I’d invite you to take a look at the memory yourself, if you were currently capable of reading my mind.”

 _Low blow,_ Ezra thought — but maybe he’d deserved it. “So what’s it matter if both versions were used?” he asked, moving along. “You think some ancient mantra has anything to do with—” He gestured violently between himself and Thrawn. “—with _this_?”

“Ancient mantras do seem rather important to Jedi,” Thrawn said dryly. 

“Well, not to me,” said Ezra. Thrawn sat back a little, narrowing his eyes.

“ _You_ are not a fully-trained Jedi,” he said. “In any case, I think it’s worth the time to consider it. How does one fall to the Dark Side, again please?”

Ezra huffed out a sigh through his nose. An image of Maul swam before his eyes, there and gone before he could blink.

“I’m not exactly an expert in that,” he muttered.

“More of an expert than I am, certainly,” said Thrawn. There was no venom in his tone. Ezra sat up a little bit straighter, trying to organize his thoughts.

“Right,” he said, “well, they say any sort of untamed negative emotion leads to the Dark Side. So if you—”

“ _Who_ says?” Thrawn asked.

Oh, hell. He was one of _those_ types, Ezra noted sourly — the type who asked a question and then demanded more detail from every single aspect of the answer, just to be a dick about it. “It’s just, like, a known fact,” he said aloud. “I mean, look at the Sith Code.”

“You forget you are dealing with someone almost entirely ignorant of these religions,” Thrawn said, gesturing toward himself. “Although I have certainly _attempted_ to learn more about the Jedi and the Sith, most records of their existence have either been destroyed or are so heavily restricted that even the Emperor would not allow me to access them. I know only what I have personally witnessed, and that is not much.”

Briefly, Ezra pictured Thrawn asking the Emperor for more information about the Force. Yeah, he couldn’t imagine that going over well.

“Okay,” he said, “so basically, the Dark Side is all about passion, power, strength — whatever. That’s what the Sith believe in. And the Jedi, meanwhile, are all about balance.”

“No emotion,” Thrawn put in.

“Right,” said Ezra — but even as he said it, he felt an uneasy twinge deep in his chest. As if he could somehow hear that twinge, Thrawn raised an eyebrow and cocked his head. “Well, it’s not that simple,” Ezra added quickly. “It’s like, no, you’re not supposed to have emotion, but like, _everybody_ has emotions, you know? Even _you_ , weirdly enough. So I think what it means is that if you’re a Sith, you’re going to really embrace those emotions and just sort of _stay_ in them, like really let yourself soak in every minute of it, good or bad. But if you’re a Jedi, you have to learn how to let your emotions wash over you and just accept it and, you know, roll with it. Move on.”

“I see,” said Thrawn. His eyes seemed to be glowing more brightly than usual, giving him a faintly malevolent air. “Rather than wallow in your emotions, you must accept them and move on.”

Ezra shifted uneasily; it wasn’t like Thrawn to just blandly repeat everything Ezra said, so he had to be doing so now to make some kind of point. The only thing was, Ezra couldn’t be certain just what that point was. “Yeah,” he said instead of trying to think it through. “Exactly.”

“Exactly,” Thrawn repeated, inclining his head. “So which emotion are you wallowing in, Commander Bridger?”

Ezra’s mouth was dry. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be _that_ ,” he said, a little weakly. He flopped back on the bed in a deliberately careless-looking way, angling his head to look out the window rather than at Thrawn. “It could be anything. Maybe there’s some sort of Sith temple here or something and _that’s_ messing with me. We don’t know.”

He heard an almost inaudible hum from Thrawn. “I find that unlikely,” Thrawn said slowly, as though he were actually considering it. “There are temples here, yes — or rather, ruins — but they are not Sith. Nor are they Jedi. I suspect the people of this planet were not particularly Force-sensitive themselves; perhaps they were unaware even of its existence.”

Ezra scoffed, but didn’t argue — he was sort of at a disadvantage here, in that Thrawn had actually _seen_ the ruins and Ezra hadn’t. To his relief, Thrawn didn’t challenge him on it, either. 

“In any case,” said Thrawn, “there are many potential factors at play. You’ve mentioned rage; it is possible, even likely, that you feel rage on a daily basis. I understand I am not what most people would consider an ideal companion, in particular for former Rebels.”

At that, Ezra sat up so fast his head swam. “I’m not a _former_ Rebel,” he shot at Thrawn. “So far as I’m concerned, _you’re_ a former Imperial. You’re the one whose ship blew up, remember? You’re probably listed in some database somewhere as MIA. Or knowing you, they probably went straight to AWOL, right? Cuz if Grand Admiral Thrawn of all people doesn’t come back, he’s either dead or he’s just switched loyalties. Switched loyalties _again_ , I mean — since you apparently used to be in some other military, too.”

Thrawn’s eyebrow twitched. “I am still a captain in the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet,” he said. “I have never _ceased_ to be a captain.”

“Good for you,” Ezra said, flopping back down on the mattress again. “I’m sure they’ll love to hear that when you get back. Cuz that definitely makes up for the — what is it, ten years? — as an Imperial, right?”

“You are trying to distract me,” Thrawn said. He leaned forward in his seat as if to compensate for Ezra lying down, and Ezra was uncomfortably aware of Thrawn’s eyes scanning his face, reading every minute muscle twitch. Ezra held his face as still as possible, desperately hoping that if he made himself look like a wooden mannequin, there would be nothing left for Thrawn to read.

“Ah,” said Thrawn flatly, sitting back again. “The concept of negative emotions in general makes you uncomfortable. Not necessarily rage, then; perhaps grief.”

“Grief?” Ezra repeated, turning his head against the mattress to stare at Thrawn. His eyebrows were furrowed, his mouth twisting from confusion. “What do you mean? Over Kanan?”

After a long pause, Thrawn inclined his head. “Certainly, the death of your master is cause for grief,” he said, a little too tonelessly for Ezra’s taste. He watched as Thrawn’s eyes flicked casually away from him.

For a moment, Ezra almost bought it. The idea that his relationship with the Force was struggling so much because of Kanan, because he’d lost his Jedi Master — it fit together neatly, like the satisfying click of a 3-D jigsaw holo falling into place. And it was true that he was grieving for Kanan, just as it was true he had mostly avoided thinking about it at all.

But he knew deep down that this wasn’t the answer. He could examine his grief over Kanan remotely, almost the same way he could look over his and Thrawn’s hunting tools and count them to make sure none were missing. He could see the depth and severity of those feelings — of everything he’d been refusing to deal with — and knew it wasn’t enough to fracture him this badly. 

To make the _oth’ola endzali_ scald his hand.

He thought of Maul again, this time with a bitter taste flooding his mouth, and shook his head. “It’s an okay theory,” he said, “but it doesn’t make sense, really. I’ve dealt with grief before.”

Maul’s image wavered, replaced by the foggy memory of Ezra’s parents, their surroundings — his childhood home — a blur, but their faces frozen in time forever by the Force.

“Yes,” said Thrawn from across the room — his tone of voice, distant and cool, made it clear he hadn’t picked up on Ezra’s mood. Or if he had, he didn’t care to acknowledge it. “Most people _have_ dealt with grief before, you know. Even at your age.”

Ezra felt his temper flare. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep it in check, then remembered that Thrawn did the same thing whenever he was angry and bit his tongue instead. “You don’t have to be a dick about it,” he said, his voice as measured as he could make it. “You lost your parents when you were a kid, too. You know what it’s like.”

Thrawn tossed him a calculating look. “I did not intend to offend you,” he said carefully. “I meant to say it is not uncommon for a man your age to experience grief, such as for one’s parents or for a cherished mentor. But it _is_ uncommon for a man your age to be cut off from his galaxy and friends and to experience grief for forty-six thousand people all at once.”

Lying on the bed, Ezra could only stare up at the ceiling, his face frozen and his breath refusing to come. He couldn’t believe Thrawn had said it; he felt his muscles twitching beneath his skin, urging him to stand up, to fight, to run — something, anything. At the same time, he felt so weak that he knew he couldn’t move at all.

“My guess,” said Thrawn softly as Ezra covered his face, “would be a combination of grief and survivor’s guilt. You saw my memories of the crash; perhaps you were confronted with the reality of your actions for the first time in full. The resulting emotional imbalance might have gone a long way toward damaging your relationship with the Force; perhaps you have incorrectly speculated on my own emotional state, and doing so has damaged your mind-reading capability as well.

“To read my mind, you must first establish a link,” Thrawn said. Gradually, feeling feverish and cold at the same time, Ezra uncovered his eyes just enough so he could watch Thrawn as he spoke. “You must build a channel, yes?”

Reluctantly, Ezra nodded. 

“And as we’ve established,” Thrawn continued, gesturing to his bloody nose, “when Sith infiltrate another person’s mind, it causes pain. We theorized that this happens because the Dark Side Force-users do not bother to build a connection first, or perhaps because they are incapable of doing so. Lately, since seeing my memories of the crash, you have had difficulty establishing a proper connection, yes?”

Again, Ezra nodded. This time, he was slow to do it because his mind was whirring over the implications, not because he was reluctant to admit it.

“Perhaps you have difficulty establishing a connection,” Thrawn said delicately, “because you fear _my_ emotional state.” 

There was a pause just long enough for a quiet, steady breath; with no light coming through the window, Ezra couldn’t be sure of the expression on Thrawn’s face, but something in the air made him go still anyway, made him hold his breath.

“I do not blame you for the _Chimaera’s_ wreck,” Thrawn said. “I don’t blame you for the loss of life. War is war, Commander Bridger — you did what you thought was necessary for a victory, and I cannot blame you for that. You escaped from the bridge as the _Chimaera_ crashed, and I cannot blame you for that, either — you were unfamiliar with the controls, and with impact only seconds away, you could not reasonably be expected to learn. Nor do I blame you for—” A shadow crossed his face, there and gone in a flash. “—what happened afterward,” he said, biting the words out. “You were exhausted from using the Force for too long and at too great a degree; I have seen a similar type of exhaustion before, and I know you could not have assisted with my rescue attempts. I have known this and worked to accept it from the start.”

For a long moment, Ezra could think of nothing to say. His face worked; he concentrated on thinking nothing, on feeling nothing, on stretching out to the Force, losing himself in it — letting the overwhelming flood of emotions he couldn’t even identify wash over him entirely. When he finally spoke, his voice was trembling — but only a little, steady enough that it might have fooled somebody other than Thrawn. 

“You’re saying you don’t feel _anything_ negative about me?” he asked, the challenge in his tone lost to a minute tremor. “After everything I did, you’re not even a little angry? You don’t feel anything at all?”

Thrawn contemplated him for a while, saying nothing. Finally, his eyes shifted away and he leaned over, retrieving his knife and a bark-covered strip of wood from the floor of the shelter. He turned the blade over in his battered hands, examining it in the dark.

“If I do,” he said, “what does it matter? You will have to read the minds of men who actively hate you in the future. Men who want you dead. True enemies, people on the other side of the war. And you will have to forge that connection nonetheless; it isn’t _my_ emotions that matter. It’s yours.”

Ezra’s blurred vision focused on the block of wood in Thrawn’s hands. His throat ached; his limbs felt cold and weak. He wasn’t sure, later on, if he ever nodded or if he simply sat there, quiet and exhausted, accepting Thrawn’s version of events without batting an eye.

He watched as Thrawn dug the edge of his blade into the bark, sending long, graceful slivers of it spiraling to the ground.

“If you aren’t ready, I suggest you meditate on it,” Thrawn said. “If you _are_ ready…”

His eyes flicked up, meeting Ezra’s dead-on.

“...I suggest we try again.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra makes a breakthrough.

“Care…?” Ezra guessed, gritting the syllable out between his teeth. He opened one eye and caught a sneak peek of Thrawn’s impassive face, giving absolutely nothing away.

“Caaaaare…?” Ezra tried again. When Thrawn still didn’t help him out, he dropped the pained-and-confused act and scowled. “Well, it starts with ‘care,’” he said.

“A strange name in your part of the galaxy,” Thrawn noted. 

“Well, maybe it’s short for something,” Ezra said. Actually, that theory seemed pretty plausible now that he thought of it. “Like maybe it’s not ‘Care.’ Maybe it’s Karé or Cara, or like Carey or something like that.”

“Hm,” said Thrawn, not sounding impressed. “And you’re certain this is my aide’s name?”

“Dude,” said Ezra, who was not at all certain, “it’s the only name I’ve found in two whole days. What else could it be?”

Thrawn seemed to be fighting an internal battle. After a long pause — and with obvious reluctance — he said, “In the interest of saving time…”

Ezra flopped back down into his seat with a dramatic, “ _Ugh_.”

“Would you rather I say nothing so you can continue down the wrong path?” Thrawn asked, spreading his hands out palm-up. He rushed to explain before Ezra could get a word in. “Commodore Karyn Faro was my first officer aboard the _Chimaera_. You may remember her from earlier — you saw her at the holodeck with me, discovering the Grysks had almost infiltrated as far as Coruscant. And you saw our confrontation over Koja.”

“Ugh,” said Ezra again, scrubbing at his face. “I didn’t know her first name was _Karyn_. So she’s not your aide?”

“She is now an admiral in her own right,” said Thrawn a little primly, sounding like an uptight protocol droid. “No, she was never my aide.”

“I’ve been circling that thread for _hours_ ,” Ezra said. He removed his hands from his face and shook his fingers out, trying to dispel the build-up of frustration currently clogging his veins like so much lactic acid. “Were you thinking about her on purpose?” he asked Thrawn semi-hopefully. “To throw me off?”

Thrawn hesitated, but eventually shook his head. “I was not deliberately attempting to throw you off,” he said. “But I _was_ thinking about her. Admiral Faro has some experience with … non-traditional forms of signal communication. I was contemplating whether she might be within range.”

Ezra blinked at that. A moment later, looking out the window at the wind and rain, he snorted. “You really think _anyone_ we know is in range?”

Thrawn reached up, rubbing his own shoulder — his sore shoulder, Ezra remembered from their first mind-reading encounter — as he looked away. “I think it is possible some of your colleagues will look for you,” he said. “And I think it is possible some of mine might search for me in time. But in both scenarios, I do not believe we are their priority — until the conflict between the Empire and your Rebel Alliance is over, I don’t believe we should pin our hopes on any sort of rescue mission.”

It sounded reasonable enough, but Ezra couldn’t be sure how much of it Thrawn really believed. It didn’t seem very much like Thrawn to waste time thinking about a scenario he didn’t think would come to pass; was he planning something, something with Faro? Something Ezra didn’t know about? Or was it just that Thrawn, like everyone else in the world, sometimes let his mind wander to unimportant things? Somehow, that seemed less likely than the possibility that he was plotting something.

Thrawn’s eyes tracked up again, scanning Ezra’s face. He let his hand drop from his twinging shoulder and sat up straighter.

“I assure you,” he said gravely, “if I had a way to signal Faro or anyone else, I would tell you. Not only out of courtesy — your Force abilities are too valuable, particularly in the area of signal-boosting, to be wasted purely for the sake of deceit.”

Ezra rolled his eyes, muttering a quick, “Gee, thanks” — but Thrawn’s words had the ring of truth about them, even if it _was_ a little unsettling how he’d read Ezra’s mind like that. Well, read his _face_ , at least.

“Speculation and planning are rarely wasted efforts,” Thrawn added, as if he could see every single one of Ezra’s thoughts written clearly in the air. “Even if a particular strategy never comes to pass, the act of planning can be seen as practice or even exercise; and without exercise, every muscle eventually grows weak.”

He nodded at the array of carved figures and puzzles a meter or so away from him. Ezra glanced at them but said nothing, his eyebrows furrowed — they looked fine to him. 

“You’re telling me you used to be a master sculptor?” he guessed. He could just barely hear Thrawn exhaling — it could have been a chuckle, but it was probably a sigh.

“I’m telling you I used to be much faster at this,” said Thrawn, taking up his knife again. “Wood is not generally kept in supply on Imperial starships.”

And just like that — somewhere in the middle of Thrawn’s sentence, so quickly it was impossible to tell exactly when it happened — a signal pinged inside their connection, fast and bright like a flare unleashed against a night sky. Without thinking — without even pausing to garble out an explanation to Thrawn — Ezra threw himself after it, chasing the fading light into the dark antechambers of Thrawn’s mind.

The thread spiraled out ahead of him, twisting and flashing at a rate that was almost impossible to follow or see. Out of instinct alone, Ezra followed it, refusing to let it slip out of his grasp. This was his first potential breakthrough — his first possible lead — since Thrawn first asked him to find the aide’s name, and if he didn’t catch it now — if he failed here, same as he’d failed before—

And suddenly, just like that, the thread was in his hands, vibrant and glowing and warm.

* * *

He stands not far away from Cadet Vanto — Ensign Vanto now — both of them in the stiff dress uniforms of Imperial officers. There’s no mistaking the family resemblance between Vanto and his parents; he has his mother’s eyes and the same unhappy furrow between his eyebrows when he is vexed, and though his father is balding now, it’s clear from his sideburns that he once had Vanto’s unruly hair. 

Around them, he sees other cadets embracing their families just as Vanto is embracing his parents now. They glance at Thrawn; he gets a good glimpse of that too-familiar furrow between the mother’s eyebrows when she sees him standing nearby. 

_—that alien,_ she says in a whisper, and Thrawn tactfully moves away, bringing himself out of earshot. The gesture is lost on them; Vanto is facing the wrong direction to see it but his parents notice and their expressions only grow more sour. He’s slighted them somehow by stepping back; he isn’t sure how, and it doesn’t seem to matter that they slighted him first. 

He still hasn’t mastered human social situations, he notes ruefully. In a better world, perhaps the Aristocra would have sent himself and Thrass together — the perfect team for a mission like this, the best examples of Chiss military strategy and diplomacy working side by side. But there’s no point imagining how he and Thrass might have avoided this situation; he attempts to correct his mistake, moving closer to the Vanto family again.

Just in time for Ensign Vanto to turn around, see him lingering nearby, and scowl.

Of all the foul-tempered humans to get stuck with….

Well, there’s no point going back now. Thrawn greets the Vantos with a measured smile, the most expressive smile he can force himself to turn toward a stranger. This is a gesture he was forced to iron out of himself not long after his acceptance into the Mitth family; it is something Thrass harped on over and over again — the importance of _not_ smiling, the duty of each Mitth family representative to show a controlled and dignified expression at all times. It is difficult to adapt to new rules once again, especially after so long following the old ways — but it is not impossible.

Only the Vantos do not smile back. Rather, Mrs. Vanto attempts to, but her husband and son do not. In any case, it is a pale imitation of a smile. 

_You must be the one who’s pulled our son off the supply track,_ Mr. Vanto says. 

This is not an ideal conversation. Thrawn swallows his smile at once, reverting to the commanding, regal mask he learned in childhood. It comes across as cold to humans and Chiss alike; he knows this, is firmly aware that he’s never been able to master the expression of warm neutrality that Thrass was so skilled at, but this knowledge isn’t useful in the slightest. What else can he do? More friendly expressions have already been proven pointless. 

He glances at Ensign Vanto, who is schooling his expression — not particularly well. There is embarrassment there, discomfort — but he shares his parents’ dissatisfaction with Thrawn. Rightfully so, perhaps, but of course he does not see his own potential. Nonetheless, he has the right to be angry. 

_Ensign Vanto has proven himself to be a capable officer,_ Thrawn says, inclining his head in a minute bow; he sees from the distasteful twitch of Mr. Vanto’s lips that this is not a common or acceptable gesture on Lysatra. _I believe he will succeed in whichever path his career takes._

This is evidently not the ideal response, either. Ensign Vanto’s features have settled into a distant contempt; his parents are less reserved, wearing their anger openly on their faces. 

How uncomfortable to be raised by people with so little control, Thrawn thinks. But he must remember the cultural values are different here, with more emphasis — or so he’s gathered — on interpersonal warmth and less on competence and dignity. Perhaps this difference is not as damaging as it seems; Vanto is indeed capable and intelligent, standing out even amongst the Empire’s best (and wealthiest) recruits, with a streak of independent thought not common for young humans. 

Or for young Chiss, really. 

He is preparing to extricate himself from the situation when Ensign Vanto overcomes his contempt — perhaps his sense of embarrassment wins out — and distracts his parents voluntarily, pulling them into another hug. He mutters his goodbyes at the same time, making excuses. The ceremony is over; family members have already been asked to leave twice; he must hurry if he wants to retrieve his orders before the line forms. 

His parents accept the farewell readily — not a surprise. Thrawn remembers in detail the tales Vanto has told him of their family shipping company — the long weeks running missions with his uncles and aunts, or waiting at home for his parents to return from a mission of their own. Their discomfort with an alien lieutenant standing nearby is apparently strong enough to overpower their desire for more time with their son.

In a sense, this is one of very few behaviors from the Vantos which Thrawn secretly approves of. If his own parents were still alive when he joined the military, he suspects they would have acted much the same way — no outrageous shows of emotions like some of the other families around him, no dramatic farewells. His father likely would have said nothing; his mother likely would have pushed for a speedy goodbye in order to return to the day’s work as quickly as she could.

He hears Mr. and Ms. Vanto’s goodbye: _We love you, Eli._ And then they are gone, and for a moment, the tension between Thrawn and Vanto dissolves. They walk to the distribution stand in silence, queuing behind one other Imperial ensign who already stands at the window. Their conversation is idle, unimportant; Vanto seems to have forgotten his anger.

Until he receives his datacard, of course, and slots it into the pad to see his orders.

 _The Thunder Hawk?_ he reads, voice strangled, eyes wide in horror, heat rising. _Aide to Lieutenant Thrawn?_

He says it like it’s a death sentence, Thrawn notes. Vanto is beyond displeased; perhaps this has been a miscalculation, but Thrawn doesn’t think so. Vanto just needs another push in the proper direction.

 _I will tell them I don’t accept,_ Thrawn says firmly, pretending to be just as displeased as Vanto is. He sees Vanto considering this option, his eyes flickering as he weighs the benefits and drawbacks one at a time. Just as quickly, Vanto’s lips settle into a grim line and Thrawn knows he has rejected a career in supply.

Temporarily, Vanto thinks.

 _No,_ he says slowly. _There’s no point. They don’t go back on orders; once they’re loaded into a datacard, these things might as well be set in stone._

He takes a deep breath, his chest expanding, and looks up at Thrawn again. Unhappy, perhaps. Resigned, but forcing himself to be optimistic, to think of the benefits this might bring him. Right now, Thrawn knows, he can think of none.

In the future, he’ll know this was for the best.

* * *

Ezra swam out of the memory, gasping for air as the shelter came back into sight around him — the exact same way he’d gasp while surfacing from the river. Across from him, Thrawn sat entirely unharmed — no new cuts on his hands, no nosebleed, no lines of pain tightening his face. He was watching Ezra, his eyes wide with open curiosity; there was nothing in his hands this time, nothing to distract him while Ezra rooted around inside his head.

“Dude,” Ezra breathed, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. “You’re _such_ an asshole.”

Unbelievably, Thrawn smiled.

“Perhaps,” he said. “What did you find?”

The name was clear — in fact, Ezra felt a little stupid for not remembering this cadet earlier. Though really, how could _he_ have known Thrawn’s Academy roommate eventually became his aide?

“Eli Vanto,” Ezra said. His teeth were practically tingling from a sense of accomplishment. “That’s him, right?”

Thrawn inclined his head. He’d seemed like the very picture of rigidity when Ezra first resurfaced, but now he was in languid motion again, crossing his legs and leaning back against the shelter wall, his eyes drifting away from Ezra.

“His parents were assholes, too,” Ezra said, as a sort of half-hearted apology. “But you didn’t have to manipulate him like that.”

Thrawn just shrugged. “You seemed to lose awareness mid-sentence,” he said softly, changing the subject. “I said, ‘ _Wood is not generally kept in supply on Imperial starships,_ ’ and immediately I sensed the change in you; your eyes were glazed, as though you were unconscious. What happened?”

“I… I don’t know,” Ezra said. “For some reason, it was just like … the channel opened up again. Only I didn’t realize it was actually closed. Suddenly I saw this thread — like I told you about before — and I knew I needed to follow it.” He looked at Thrawn, feeling half-proud and half-uneasy, and shrugged. “So I did.”

For once, Thrawn actually seemed to share his enthusiasm. He stood and moved to the window as quickly as an uncoiling spring, glancing outside at the grey sunlight and light drizzle of rain. The wind was still high — higher than ever before, really — but otherwise, the storm was granting them some leeway today, and it was abundantly clear from the look on Thrawn’s face that, although he’d hidden it well so far, he was tired of being shut inside. Maybe that had something to do with _who_ he was stuck inside with, maybe it didn’t. 

He glanced at Ezra, a contemplative slant to his eyebrows and a frown on his face. “We should attempt it at a distance,” he said, looking outside again. His eyes darted across the distant tree-line and the river — which, thanks to all the rain, seemed to have crept right up to the edge of their clearing. “Or perhaps first we should escalate. Practice with more important information first. Build your confidence before moving on to more difficult tasks.”

He seemed to be talking to himself, but it wasn’t like Ezra couldn’t _hear_ him standing there talking about Ezra’s lack of confidence. 

“I can handle it from a distance,” he said, trying not to sound indignant. 

Not looking away from the window — in fact, he leaned out farther, allowing the rain to mist his hair — Thrawn said, “You’re certain?”

Ezra gave a hollow-sounding scoff. He wasn’t _certain_ he could, no — not after struggling for so long to find Eli Vanto’s name. But he was excited about the new breakthrough — excited and nervous all at once — and he could feel the Force singing in his blood, and he wanted to try. 

“Then let’s not waste time,” Thrawn said. His voice was flat, but a faint smile touched his lips as he turned to face Ezra again. With the channel wide open between them, Ezra could feel Thrawn’s peculiar enthusiasm emanating toward him — different from Ezra’s excitement, more intense and somehow not quite as happy. There was a strong-willed undercurrent to it, a determination that was almost intimidating — more like the excitement of a hunter about to nab his prey than that of a small child looking forward to a treat. Ezra could taste a long-fought-for goal behind Thrawn’s change in mood, but he couldn’t see well enough to tell what it was.

“Okay,” he said aloud, jumping off the bed. “Let’s go for it.” 

“I’ll go to the river,” Thrawn said swiftly, almost eagerly. He was already heading for the door, removing the interior braces that kept the wind from blowing it open. Ezra helped him, following Thrawn outside a moment later; the wind nearly threw him off-balance, and it took a great deal of physical exertion and help from the Force to stay where he was. 

“Find the code to my aft bridge holopod,” Thrawn said to him almost as an aside, yelling to be heard above the wind. 

Before Ezra could even acknowledge the command, Thrawn pushed ahead, fetching one of their unused basket traps and a fishing pole from his own shelter. With his head down and his shoulders hunched against the wind, he made his way toward the deep water on the edge of the clearing. Ezra grabbed a basket as well and followed at a significantly different angle, aiming for the far end of the forest — by the time he reached it, he’d be right by the river, too, meaning he could fish while maintaining a distance of at least half a kilometer from Thrawn. 

The ground was wet and soft beneath him, tilting him from side to side as he walked — but he could tell at a glance what the rain was doing to the vegetation. All around him, everything was a lush, vibrant green — and what Thrawn had said several days ago was right. He could recognize plants and trees he’d seen a dozen times before on Lothal or in holos. Growing wild all around them were the distinctive leaves of bazolh root, a bulbous yellow vegetable used for extra spice that used to sell for high prices at the Lothal market. He could see the serrated leaves of roumon-gui sprouting up knee-high in the clearing, catching on his trouser seams as he pushed through them. They left a spicy-sweet odor in the air, the same scent as the thick, braided bread his mother used to bake and season with roumon-gui on holidays. 

He hoisted the basket up higher under his arm and picked up the pace. Rain drizzled down on him, cool but not particularly bothersome, and although the sun wasn’t out in force, the humidity mingled together with spring temperatures to create a pleasant warmth in the air. He reached the edge of the water, plunging through the first few meters of shallow flooding in his bare feet and rolled-up trouser cuffs. It was still almost freezing, not warmed by the sun at all, but a large tree emerged from the water nearby. It loomed over the flooded clearing where the water was deep enough for the current to rush through.

Ezra swung himself up onto the nearest branch, bringing the basket with him. He could sense fish swimming by beneath him, tugged along by the current and blissfully unaware that he waited overhead. Dimly, through his connection to Thrawn, he could half-see, half-feel the other man running his free hand along the muddy bottom of the river, searching for a good place to set his trap. 

Ezra leaned against the tree trunk, tense from the combination of ultra-cold flood water on his bare feet and the cool fizz of rain spraying against his face. He let the bark dig into his back, trying to get comfortable in advance of what might be a long session. The tree seemed almost to sway beneath him, branches creaking in the wind, fresh green leaves brushing against his face and moving away naturally before he could bat them off. It was unnerving, but his tree was essentially stable, too wide in circumference to be under any real danger from the wind.

The same wasn’t true of the other trees in the forest, Ezra knew. It had been Thrawn’s idea to place their shelters down in a clearing, well away from the woods, and after just one day of stormy weather, Ezra was immensely grateful for that decision. He’d seen saplings on the edge of the field bowing down until they splintered at the base; in the night, it wasn’t uncommon for the snap-roar of an older tree falling to wake him from his sleep. 

He glanced down the uneven line of the flooded river, just barely catching sight of Thrawn in the distance. Debris floated along rapidly past Thrawn’s distant figure — not just broken branches and water-logged tree trunks, but also bits and pieces from the _Chimaera_. The blackened, twisted metal wasn’t likely to float, but any remnants of fiberplast would, and Ezra watched as they bobbed by directly beneath his perch. 

The fiberplast would last longer than any of them, he knew. Longer than him or Thrawn, certainly — but longer than the animals here, too, and the plants, and the tree he sat in. He shrugged off a sense of unease — how long would the _Chimaera_ stay there, the charred hull intact while the forest died over and over again around it? — and tried to calm his mind, remembering what Thrawn had said two nights before.

It brought him a sense of both embarrassment and gratification. Maybe Thrawn really _did_ blame Ezra — how could he not? — but at least he was willing to pretend. On a deeper level, one Ezra didn’t really seek to acknowledge, he sensed a sort of unfeigned and simple verity behind Thrawn’s words, the same kind of half-appalling, half-endearing honesty he used to casually insult Ezra on a daily basis. _I don’t blame you for the crash_ had the same ring of truth embedded in every syllable of every word as _You don’t pull your weight around here._ But believing something on an intellectual level didn't make it emotionally true, and Thrawn's emotions were so muted and difficult to decipher that Ezra sometimes suspected Thrawn himself wasn't sure how he felt.

He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. Relaxed his fingers; felt the burn wound on his palm sting before the pain dulled away. In a moment, he could feel the spindly-legged spiders and fat beetles roaming underneath and over the wet bark of the tree — and the leaves, green and healthy, sated by the abundance of water — and the swollen roots, the baffled fish below him trying desperately to adjust to the flood — every sparse, thin ray of sunlight doing its best to warm the river. 

And Thrawn, of course, now weighing the basket trap down and tying the rocks in place. His mind flickered in recognition of Ezra’s presence, then flickered away again as a fish brushed his hand on its way past. 

He was easily distracted from the presence of a Jedi in his mind, Ezra realized. Used to it. Already focusing on the task at hand, aware of Ezra’s efforts but not actively watching them. There was still a sense of wariness there — in fact, it stood out starkly, more noticeable than ever before in contrast with the deliberate show of trust Thrawn seemed to be putting on by mentally looking the other way. 

He shook these thoughts away and forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. The access code to Thrawn’s personal holopod — the aft bridge one, that’s what he’d said. That was the one Ezra had seen before, both in Thrawn’s memories ( _Thrawn and Faro hunched over the display, tracking the Grysks with a red dotted line_ ) and in real life, when he’d sneaked aboard the _Chimaera_ and hidden in the aft bridge office waiting for his chance to run. 

It seemed reasonable that any top-secret messages routed to Thrawn during his time as a Grand Admiral would go through that same holopod, so it was at least obvious why Thrawn wanted him to find the access code — unlike the whole debacle with his aide’s name. And this time, at least, Ezra had something solid to work with — an image of the holopod itself, memories of Thrawn using it — things he could chase as certainly as he’d chased the memory of Eli Vanto after hearing just that one vital word, ‘supply.’

With the empty basket secured between his knees and his back set firmly against the tree, Ezra closed his eyes and opened his mind.

* * *

The threads are indistinguishable from each other; where before there was a complete absence of anything useful, now there are so many leads it seems impossible to investigate them all. Trapped in a web of glowing strands — memories vying for attention, shining so brightly and weaving together so quickly it overwhelms him — he reaches in and plucks one out at random.

He’s leaning back in his desk chair with a collection of Kojai art holos displayed all around him when his comlink chimes — a gentle, nonstandard notification sound he was able to install only through some semi-illegal hacking. But it was necessary; the pre-set notification tones are so grating that they ruin his concentration every time. He lifts his wrist and tilts it just enough to make out the code on the screen — Faro — before pressing the button.

 _Linking you through to the work group, sir,_ she says. 

She will be linking herself through as well, naturally; although they’ve never explicitly discussed it, he always expects her to listen in. She refuses to make a physical appearance most days, citing Imperial military etiquette, but her input is too valuable for Faro to sit out of these meetings entirely.

A moment later, the Kojai art fizzles away, replaced by five familiar faces. An assortment of Moffs, Grand Admirals, and one highly-rated General stare back at him, each of them presented as a full-body holo, many of them clearly stretching the holo parameters to look taller than they are. Thrawn doesn’t bother to stand; he glances down at the control board, confirming that his own display is set to a video feed — not holo — and centered only on his face. There is no reason to intimidate his allies with a full-body holo; he can only assume they have keyed their displays this way because they don’t view _him_ as an ally. 

General Bokkimr’s disapproval is plain; his features tighten when he notices the lone video feed in the midst of all these holos. The others school their expressions more successfully. This isn’t surprising; experience tells Thrawn he doesn’t have much hope of pleasing this particular crowd. He greets them amicably nonetheless, receiving a fair amount of glares and grumbles for his effort. Only Grand Admiral Lisbhel greets him with civility, perhaps because he respects the rank even if he doesn’t respect Thrawn himself.

Each one of them looks blue-skinned in the holos, Thrawn notes. He sits back and listens as the arguments begin, withholding his own input and simply absorbing the opinions of the high-ranking Imperial officials around him. 

If the others can see him biting the inside of his cheek, they don’t comment on it.

* * *

When he comes awake, he’s sitting straight up in the small cot built into the wall of his aft bridge suite, his breathing slow and calm, his muscles struggling out of relaxation, his vision unfocused from sleep. He registers Commander Vanto kneeling nearby but leaning back on his heels as if in surprise, his eyes wide and his eyebrows up. 

_Yes?_ Thrawn says; he can hear how blurred his accent has become just from being asleep. It takes Commander Vanto longer than is ideal to recuperate from whatever has startled him.

 _Message for you,_ he says, standing and stepping away. He uses Thrawn’s shoulder for support in the process, so Thrawn only stands when the space next to his cot is free, slipping his tunic out of the slim storage space nearby. _The Emperor,_ Vanto adds as Thrawn pulls the tunic over his arms.

He’s still pulling at the sealing strip as he steps into his office, where the Emperor’s holo awaits him — close-up on the face, magnified so as to look down on whoever answers the call. It’s meant to be intimidating, Thrawn supposes, but the effect is marred somewhat when the Emperor catches sight of Thrawn’s disheveled appearance and his lips twitch in a familiar look of upper-class displeasure.

Vanto stays behind, lurking in the makeshift living space where Thrawn stores some of his uniforms and cultural downloads for easy access. He can certainly hear every word the Emperor says, but he’s wise enough not to make himself seen. 

Of course, Thrawn thinks, Vanto has been wise enough to avoid the Emperor ever since he was a Myomar cadet.

 _Mitth’raw’nuruodo_ , the Emperor says, throwing as much contempt as he possibly can into each syllable. Thrawn finishes with the buttons on his tunic and bends his head forward in a brief but respectful bow; his hair gets into his eyes, tousled from sleep. No point in smoothing it down now, he decides; it will only make him look uneasy.

 _My lord,_ he says. 

The Emperor’s lips twitch again. In the other room, Thrawn can hear Vanto stifling a hiss. No one ever seems to know what to call the Emperor to his face, but they all seem to uniformly agree that whatever Thrawn decides on at the moment is horrifically incorrect. He’s not sure what’s so inappropriate about ‘my lord.’

 _Your promotion suits you,_ the Emperor says. A faint degree of heat flickers beneath his hood, visible even through the holo feed. He seems to be eyeing Thrawn’s rank plaque. _I am pleased to see you so … comfortable with your command._

Thrawn keeps his face impassive, unreadable. He shows neither amusement — a one-hour rest period after fifty hours of battle does not indicate laziness or undue ‘comfort,’ after all, and he is sure the Emperor knows that — nor intimidation, as it is clear the Emperor means for this comment to intimidate him. He feels the Emperor’s mind brush up against his own, an unpleasant feeling like a sharp electric shock that first stings and then numbs the coils of his brain. 

Outwardly, the conversation proceeds. Inwardly, Thrawn’s sense of distant amusement and contempt for the Emperor’s theatrics seems to waver and dissolve, replaced by an uneasy concentration on the painful shockwave rolling over his brain. He hears the Emperor’s request for a report the same way a drowning man hears voices from above the water’s surface. 

_We have identified one planet in the sector with intelligent life,_ he says. He will have to ask Vanto later how his answers sound; his tongue is heavy in his mouth, difficult to manipulate, and his words seem to take an eternity to come out. 

He’s more _resentful_ of the Emperor’s effect on him than he is _fearful_. Perhaps noting this, perhaps amused by it — or perhaps having extracted the information he needs — the Emperor draws away.

 _Only one planet,_ he says. Not quite a question.

_Yes, my lord._

_And have you identified anything else?_ Palpatine asks. His voice is silky, his eyes burning even through his hood. Across Thrawn’s collar bone, his brother’s _oth’ola endzali_ cools and warms, distracting him from the invisible fingers prodding once more at his mind. No, not quite distracting him — he is still very aware of the Emperor’s attempt to read his mind. What the _oth’ola endzali_ seems to do is deflect the sensation. 

A sense of calm confidence engulfs him, not entirely facilitated by Thrass’s life energy. He notes a slight flexing of the Emperor’s jaw, perhaps indicating clenched teeth.

 _The report details our findings in full,_ Thrawn says respectfully. _The bridge officers together have located various promising mining districts, including a line of harvestable chroenu. The atmosphere indicates small amounts of tibanna gas, which the locals have utilized to some degree in the agricultural industry and for energy purposes. In the forests—_

And just like that, without a final word to Thrawn, the Emperor’s holo has disappeared. He glances down at the control panel, but the indicator lights there shows the call has been deliberately disconnected. This is not a matter of interference.

 _Did he just hang up on you?_ asks Vanto, emerging from the makeshift living area.

 _It would appear so,_ says Thrawn. Although he should perhaps see this as a negative development, he feels ten kilos lighter. A headache remains behind, throbbing around his temples and reminding him of the Emperor’s power — but it scarcely registers with him now. He turns to Vanto, finally smoothing down his hair. 

_Is he…._ Vanto glances at the dormant holopod. Nervousness tightens the lines of his face. _He didn’t sound pleased with you._

 _No,_ says Thrawn. _I suppose he wasn’t._

He eyes Vanto, who eyes him back. Irritation and fear are now battling over Vanto’s face. He seems to be holding back an admonishment.

He has never been exceptionally skilled at holding back admonishments.

 _Well, you were_ insanely _disrespectful to him, sir,_ Vanto says. The irritation has won control over his voice; the fear has successfully captured his face. _You don’t even hear yourself when you’re talking to people, do you? You_ had _to say ‘The report details our findings’ like a sarcastic adolescent?_

Thrawn can’t hide his own surprise. His military posture falls apart a little as he turns to face Vanto in full. _It was intended to be respectful,_ he says. He works hard to put his voice into neutral, the way he did earlier. _This is a respectful tone._

 _If you think that’s respectful, it certainly explains a lot of sticky situations we’ve had over the past few years,_ Vanto says. _I can’t believe you survived your first court-martial. High Command should’ve had your head on a plate for the way you talk to them._

He leans against the far wall, sagging a little. The fear drains from his face. _Still, at least he didn’t choke you. Or outright kill you. We can assume you didn’t piss him off_ too _bad._

 _Always a victory,_ Thrawn says, turning back to the holopod. His message board is blinking with a black light. Tarkin, he supposes. That, or Krennic. Dread settles over him for a moment as he remembers the supply reports from Commander Vanto, the terrible picture they painted when assembled together. His fingers hover over the control board.

 _What surprised you?_ he asks mildly, not glancing away from the controls. It takes Vanto a moment to answer. Perhaps he realizes Thrawn is stalling, but he doesn’t comment on it aloud.

_You mean when I woke you up?_

Thrawn punches the first digit of his access code. _Yes._

He can imagine Vanto’s expression without looking. 

_You sat right up when I said your name,_ Vanto says. _Like you were wide awake, just waiting for someone to call you. I said, ‘Sir, there’s a message_ — _’ and then before I could get anything else out or even touch you, like to shake you awake, you were sitting right up and staring at me like you were waiting for me to go on. I’ve never seen someone wake up like that, especially not after being awake for so long._

Thrawn absorbs all this before entering the rest of his access code, not glancing at the pad, not thinking the numbers and letters as he punches them in. The messages play automatically, Grand Moff Tarkin looking down his aquiline nose as he speaks.

 _My sources tell me the ISD_ Chimaera _is on a vector for the Maw Cluster,_ Tarkin says, his voice icy. Vanto comes to stand next to Thrawn, both of them staring grimly at the recording, all traces of levity gone. 

_Might I remind you,_ Tarkin says, _of your mission in the Unknown Regions? Perhaps you feel comfortable ignoring the Emperor’s commands._

‘Comfortable’ again, Thrawn notes a little dryly. The same peculiar insult leveled at him twice in the same day, first because he dared to take an hour of rest after two days and nights of battle, second because he had the nerve to investigate supply details that anyone with half a brain and even an ounce of independent thought would want to look into; he wonders who borrowed this insult from whom, Tarkin or the Emperor — and why they’ve started discussing him in private meetings. If there’s anything Thrawn _isn’t_ right now, it’s comfortable with the Empire—

But Ezra has seen enough. He allows his consciousness to float, distancing himself from the memory until it fades out of existence entirely. He’s got the first number of the access code, but the rest is completely opaque to him, punched in by muscle memory while Thrawn’s eyes and mind were elsewhere. He drifts amongst the web of threads, searching for one that looks promising.

And then he dives in. 

It is strange to see Ar’alani and Eli Vanto together in a holo; only Vanto’s pupils give away the fact that he is human, not a Chiss. The holo flickers, a sure sign that Commodore Faro has tuned in — which means this is his cue to speak. He cannot be sure either Ar’alani or Vanto recognizes that someone else has tapped into the channel.

No, too late for the information Ezra wants — he pulls out again, taking another thread in his hands. The aft office bridge swirls around him, the dim lighting shifting to at least seventy percent. Shadows form and then disappear where Thrawn was sitting moments before; now he strides through the door at a quick pace, his hands clasped behind his back, sweat dampening his hair and a set of Mandalorian armor subtly weighing him down.

 _Not the best disguise, sir?_ says Faro at his side, hiding her amusement valiantly.

 _Not the best,_ Thrawn admits. He flashes her a quick smile — or as much of one as he can manage when his lips are so cracked they’re bleeding. He deposits the scuffed helmet on his desk and continues to the living space beyond, where a bottle of cold R’alla mineral water waits for him. He downs a full glass as quickly as he can, not bothering to mete it out. He’s overheated both from the armor and from the battle planet-side, but he’s too exhausted and thirsty now to bother changing out.

 _I suppose we didn’t have much of a choice,_ Faro allows. _Not like you could go down in a hood and some tinted glasses._

 _Indeed not,_ says Thrawn, a little breathless. At least his tongue no longer feels like dust. He fills another glass, crossing back into his office with it and scanning his message board. _With my … unique features, there isn’t much I can do in terms of disguise,_ he says, gesturing toward his face with a gauntleted hand. _Still, we have neutralized an arm of the Black Sun, curried Darth Vader’s favor, and gained at least one ally in the process. I have set the Noghri up in quarters close to mine for now, though he is of course permitted to move whenever he grows weary of me. I don’t expect it will take very long; he seemed somewhat ill-tempered on the shuttle back._

 _I’m becoming accustomed to ill-tempered people,_ says Faro, her lips twisted in distaste. _I kept an eye on Governor Pryce, sir, as you said. Made sure she was kept as far away from the action as possible._

Thrawn doesn’t respond; he thinks of Batonn, his mind whirling over the thirty thousand civilians who died there — and Nightswan, his body found intact on the city perimeter. The water goes sour against his tongue.

He can tell Faro wants to say something; he can tell she’s hesitating, not really listening to his after-action report — if it can be called that. He’s taking another drink of water, this time easing it down his parched throat in tiny, achingly cold sips, when she speaks.

_Sir, when I heard news of military action on Corellia, I…_

He sets the glass down carefully, hits the release clasp on his gauntlets. They come off with a pneumatic hiss, allowing him the chance to break eye contact with Faro. The noise fills the silence as Faro collects her thoughts; he hopes desperately she doesn’t want to address Pryce’s actions. They both know who was responsible for those deaths; speaking about it aloud might be feasible for him some other day, but not tonight, when he knows he has hours of datawork waiting for him before he can shower and sleep.

 _I know statements like this embarrass you,_ Faro says, muscling through. _But I have to admit, I was concerned for your safety. I’m glad to know my fears were unfounded._

 _It doesn’t embarrass me,_ says Thrawn, relief flooding through him. He affects mild amusement at Faro’s words, using it to mask how much it unsettles him to think of Batonn as he keys in his personal access code. _I’m glad to hear it, on the contrary. Loyalty is one of two traits I most value in my colleagues._ Privately, he’s a little touched, too, but he hides that much better than the false amusement, turning his face away as he asks, _Has the_ Hopskip’s _cargo been reloaded onboard?_

Ezra doesn’t wait to hear more. The code is a mix of Aurebesh and other alien scripts programmed into Thrawn’s holopod, and it takes all his concentration to memorize the foreign shapes. He’s still repeating it in his mind as the memory around him fades, as he enters the greater chamber of Thrawn’s mind as a whole, as—

As the _oth’ola endzali_ suddenly stops glowing and everything around Ezra goes black.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn introduces Ezra to a new friend.

The memories were so immersive that the rain startled Ezra when he opened his eyes. It was like he’d been disconnected from it somehow, the feeling of water on his skin muted and strange. 

And it wasn’t just the rain. Suddenly, it was like there were no birds in the forest, no living tree beneath him, no insects scurrying over the bark. Ezra almost dropped his basket as he sat up, leaning as far out on the branch as he dared to look up the river stream. 

Was Thrawn _dead_? It seemed stupid to even ask, but if he hadn't just been instantly killed somehow (Ezra's gut twisted at the thought), then why couldn’t Ezra sense his mind? Why was their connection gone? Earlier he’d been able to see clearly to Thrawn’s post on the river, but now the same area seemed distant and blurry, like the ground between them had stretched until Thrawn was too far away to make out.

Adrenaline spiking, Ezra grabbed hold of the branch beneath him and swung down, abandoning the basket as he ran. He landed harder than he was used to, the bark scraping his hands and the impact jarring his knees and ankles. He stumbled up, hitting his stride a moment later. The wet grass slipped beneath his feet, mud sucking at his boots, but he was running as fast as he could — and although he was funneling as much power as possible to his legs through the Force, it didn’t seem like anything was getting through. His muscles felt peculiarly useless, like someone had filled them with water while he was sleeping. 

Within a few seconds, he was close enough to the bank to make out Thrawn through the canopy of trees again, standing in the shallow end of the water and staring intently at something upstream.

A few meters closer and Ezra could tell Thrawn’s left hand was closed around something on his chest — the _oth’ola endzali_ , without a doubt. And his shoulders were tense, his knees bent, like a predator about to pounce. But what could he be staring at? 

“Thrawn!” Ezra shouted, speeding up a little. He waved one hand above his head, but Thrawn didn’t even glance his way. The wind aided Ezra, blowing northward and lengthening his stride, making up for the strange lack of energy in his legs. “Hey!” he yelled again, keeping his volume high even as he reached Thrawn’s vicinity and started to slow down. Within touching distance, he slid to a stop, almost face-planting in the wet grass, and reached for Thrawn’s shoulder. “Hey, Thrawn—”

It all happened too fast to follow after that. 

His fingers brushed Thrawn’s arm. Upstream, the water rushed around a fallen tree swept into the river by the buffeting wind. The trunk charged toward them, just ten meters or so out from where they stood on the bank — a potentially deadly force if either of them were actually in the water. But it was far enough away to miss them, to mean their current positions were safe — and Ezra’s fingers were closing around Thrawn’s sleeve, and Thrawn’s eyes were on the fallen tree, tracking its vector as it came closer and closer.

And before Ezra could stop him, Thrawn broke away from Ezra’s touch and sprinted toward the tree in a running leap. 

He came down hard on it as it swept by, slipping halfway into the current, one arm wrapping around the trunk just tight enough to save him. 

“ _Thrawn_!” Ezra screamed. Already, the tree was past him, too far for him to make the jump by natural means. He reached out to the Force, but the channel between himself and all the life around him just wouldn’t open up. No matter how hard he tried, he felt nothing. No rush of peace to calm his mind and keep the adrenaline at bay, no surge of power to his joints in preparation for a gigantic leap, nothing.

He had no other option. He took off running again, his chest and throat aching from effort as he chased the tree downriver. It outpaced him easily, carrying Thrawn away with it — but Thrawn wasn’t passively allowing the river to decide his fate. He hauled himself out of the water, balancing in a crouch aboard the bobbing trunk. Running as fast as he could behind the tree, Ezra watched in disbelief as Thrawn laid his hands on the trunk and moved forward, carefully and slowly inching his way toward the branches ahead of him. 

The water rocked him, but he kept steady even as he knelt on the trunk and lowered himself down until his stomach was pressed to the bark, reaching for something hidden in the branches below him. On the bank, Ezra could hardly make anything out — but in the next moment, Thrawn was straddling the trunk to brace himself and pulling back hard, snapping one of the branches off at the joint. He sat up, taking the branch with him, and glanced over his shoulder at the bank.

Then, not hesitating — not even taking a breath, so far as Ezra could tell — he slipped off the tree and disappeared beneath the water. The trunk charged on without him, bouncing off of boulders in the river before it disappeared around a sweeping bend.

Heart pounding, Ezra ran right up to the spot on the bank parallel to where Thrawn had sunk. His eyes darted over the surface as his chest heaved, struggling to get air, trying not to panic — and he was halfway into the shallows for a rescue attempt when Thrawn resurfaced, spitting out a mouthful of dirty water and shaking his head. He held the snapped branch up above the water as he swam in, arrowing through the current until he was close enough to shore to stand. He didn’t bother to avoid the chunks of fiberplast and uprooted saplings that were bouncing around in the river. He let them bump into him as he forced his feet through the thick water in the shallows.

By the time he reached the bank, Ezra’s heart had stopped pounding quite so hard, leaving him shivering from the cold. He stared at Thrawn openly, unable to pick out a single question from the millions spoiling around in his brain. 

For a long moment, Thrawn only stared back, an expression of open anticipation on his face. Water dripped from his hair; the branch rested in his palms; and the _oth’ola endzali’s_ cord was tangled around his neck, the leather twisted into an uncomfortable-looking knot. He didn’t bother to adjust it so that it lay right, and after a second, Ezra realized there was something else that seemed off about the pendant — it was like the _oth’ola endzali_ had become a simple piece of tarnished metal and nothing more. It wasn't glowing with life energy like it had been since the first time Ezra saw it; it wasn't emitting any sort of sense through the Force, not of Thrass or anyone else.

It was like it was dead.

When he met Thrawn’s eyes again, Thrawn hesitated only a second before holding out the severed branch to Ezra with one hand and parting the sodden leaves with the other. Attached to the wood, its claws sunk deep into the bark, was a tiny lizardine creature no bigger than the palm of Ezra’s hand, covered in fur and scales. Its tongue darted out; its eyes swiveled to follow an insect buzzing through the air. When water dripped onto its snout from a nearby leaf, it blinked and shook its head.

Slowly, Ezra looked up and found Thrawn’s eyes boring into his, his mouth set in a thin line.

“We have something to discuss,” Thrawn said.

* * *

The strange, muted effect on his senses followed Ezra into Thrawn’s shelter. It felt like having both his ears plugged or filled with water — a sense of partial deafness, a loss of balance that couldn’t be overcome through willpower or acclimation alone. He sat on a closed box near Thrawn’s woven mattress, feeling disoriented and slightly ill as Thrawn held the branch in one hand and searched for dry clothes with the other. 

Ezra didn’t even bother to look away as Thrawn dried off and changed; he was so dazed he didn’t absorb anything going on around him anyway. He couldn’t feel the Force at _all_ ; not outside him, not within him. It was nowhere to be found. Though he stretched out to it, he could feel nothing responding to his call, nothing reaching back to meet him.

He rubbed his eyes and simply sat there for a long moment, his hands covering his face. Gradually, his senses came alive again in an inconsequential way, feeding input to his brain the way they were supposed to — but he couldn’t deny that there was still something extra missing, some additional sense he couldn’t fathom, except he knew it was gone. 

It was something he’d felt before, he realized, but only briefly. A loss of control so complete that it made him panic at the time, even before the tilting of the _Chimaera_ threw him head-first into the bulkhead. Back then, the Force had only seemed to leave him for a minute or two, coming back in time for him to make that final, life-saving jump, gone and back again so fast that in the tumult of everything that happened after, he forgot it even happened.

But now…

Thrawn brought the branch with him to the other side of the shelter, folding himself cross-legged onto his woven mattress. He laid the branch across his knees, balancing it there as he looked up at Ezra. Moving his hands to scrub through his hair, Ezra stared back at the oblivious little lizard nestled between the leaves.

“You had those in your office,” he said dully, recognizing the creature at last. “Big ones. Two of them, right above your desk.”

“I had statues of them, yes,” Thrawn said. He was watching Ezra cautiously, like he was worried the Jedi might somehow break. Or maybe like he could tell there was something off, something wrong with the Force. With Ezra.

Ezra snorted out a humorless laugh. 

“They are called ysalimiri,” Thrawn said. He pushed the wet leaves away with one hand, brushed one finger down the ysalimir’s back. “This one is still an infant.”

Sighing, Ezra moved his hands down to the back of his neck, hanging his head between his knees. “That’s … neat, Thrawn,” he said, voice strained. “Why’d you jump in the river after it? You just like lizards that much, or…?”

There was no response to that. Ezra kept rubbing his neck, waiting for Thrawn to answer, but when the silence dragged on without either of them speaking, he finally glanced up. Thrawn’s head was cocked, his eyes on the ysalimir but an open look of curiosity on his face that was probably directed at Ezra.

“What?” Ezra asked.

“You are not feeling well,” Thrawn observed.

Ezra sat up with a sigh that came out sounding like, “ _Eupgh_.” He gave the ysalimir another dead-eyed glance. “Something’s _really_ weird right now,” he said. “I know you can’t feel it, but … the Force is … it’s like I’ve lost all connection to it entirely. Like it’s not even there for me to connect to. I keep waiting for it to come back, but…”

Thrawn’s curiosity faded away, replaced with a knowledgeable, almost bored expression.

“I’d have thought you’d recognize the source of that,” he said, lifting the branch a little. “You’ve encountered them twice now, after all.”

It took a long moment for Ezra to realize what Thrawn meant. At first he looked at the branch, thinking for a moment that it might be some sort of Force-sensitive tree. Then he sat up a little straighter, the last of the haze in his mind fading away fast as he looked at the ysalimir with fresh eyes. He could feel his eyebrows contracting and his jaw dropping in horror.

“The _lizard_?” he said.

“It’s an ysalimir,” Thrawn helpfully reminded him.

“I _know_ what it’s — what do you mean, the _lizard’s_ the source?” Ezra jumped to his feet, then immediately slowed down, approaching the tiny lizard with all the caution due to a mighty predator. He held his hand out carefully, stopping several centimeters away, and let the lizard sniff him. It didn’t seem interested in making Ezra’s acquaintance, so he drew back again, his eyes darting warily between the lizard and Thrawn, who had helpfully moved the branch closer to Ezra. 

“You’re telling me this thing is — what, blocking my relationship to the Force?” asked Ezra, mystified. “Or _disrupting_ it somehow, or … I mean, what exactly is it doing?”

Thrawn lowered the branch gently, adjusting the various offshoots so that it rested on his knees without disturbing the ysalimir. “I cannot be certain,” he said, “having no better source of information on the Force than yourself. But I believe they are Force-resistant — they push the Force away from them in bubbles, and large numbers of these creatures create correspondingly large bubbles, capable of affecting a wider circumference than any individual ysalimir on its own.”

This was it. This was Ezra’s time to shine. He straightened up, took a deep breath, and gave Thrawn his very best _Are you stupid?_ look. He could only hope it was one-tenth as scathing as Thrawn’s.

“You disagree?” said Thrawn, unfazed.

“Uh, hell yeah, I disagree!” said Ezra. “It can’t be _Force-resistant,_ dude. Literally _no one_ is Force-resistant! The Force is the life energy of everything around us, like — if it’s alive, it’s _got_ to have the Force. You can’t just neutralize that; it doesn’t happen.”

Thrawn looked down at the tiny ysalimir, his nose wrinkled. “I was under the impression the Force also moves through inanimate objects and emanates from life as well as death.”

Ezra blinked, bending forward to present his index finger to the ysalimir again. This time, it craned its neck to sniff at him, a reptilian tongue flicking in and out of its mouth but not touching Ezra’s skin. He moved away again, reluctantly this time, and gazed anxiously out at the rain.

“I mean, I guess technically that’s right,” he said. “But I don’t know … I thought when people died, their life energy just pooled back into the universe, like —” His eyes darted to the necklace tangled around Thrawn’s neck, where a small portion of his brother’s life energy was permanently trapped, and changed his mind mid-sentence. “I’ve never exactly connected with something that was dead. It’s all just a theory to me.”

Gravely, Thrawn arranged the leaves to cover the ysalimir again. “It can be done,” he said. “It isn’t much different from connecting to an inanimate object; you’ve done that before.”

“It _is_ different,” Ezra insisted, his mouth dry. 

“Only because it’s difficult to make the muscles of a corpse move in a realistic way,” Thrawn said. Ezra’s head whipped around to stare at him, but Thrawn’s gaze was far away, like he didn’t realize how unsettling his words were. It made Ezra’s skin crawl. “You don’t have to worry about muscles when moving an inanimate object.”

Was it Thrawn’s older brother who’d moved a corpse with the Force? Or was it someone else — one of the Jedi Thrawn had mentioned days before, maybe, or one of the Sith Lords? The Emperor or Darth Vader seemed the most likely choices, but it wasn’t a subject Ezra wanted to dwell on. He stared at the mass of leaves obscuring the ysalimir from view, a frown wrinkling his brow.

“So these things are native to this planet?” he asked, keeping his voice even and casual.

Not even and casual enough, apparently. Thrawn’s eyes darted up to examine Ezra’s face.

“Not necessarily,” he said, his own voice suddenly guarded. “Certainly, they have been found on at least one other planet, though they are now almost extinct. It is possible they were imported here long ago.”

“One other planet?” Ezra repeated.

Thrawn gazed at him for a long moment, his face impossible to read — just as Ezra hoped _his_ was. “Myrkr,” Thrawn said eventually, giving up the name of the planet like it was a peace offering. “A primitive planet in the Unknown Regions.”

“So not far from here?” Ezra asked, crossing his arms. Thrawn neither agreed with nor refuted this, simply staring implacably at Ezra. “How do you know about it?” Ezra asked.

“The Imperial Navy is not fond of non-humans,” Thrawn said without a trace of animosity. “Once I attained my rank, I was sent to the Unknown Regions to map the area — a mission which took me far away from the eyes of the Core Worlds. I discovered many planets such as Myrkr and Koja which were not on Imperial maps.”

“Awfully lucky, isn’t it?” said Ezra.

Thrawn didn’t respond, looking almost bored.

“That we happened to crash on the only other planet in the entire galaxy with lizards that can apparently _block_ the Force?” Ezra said. It was difficult to keep his temper in check, but he managed — his fingers were clenched tight on his sleeves, his shoulders tense and his voice tight, but he wasn’t shouting. Not yet. He glared down at the hidden ysalimir, feeling all too keenly how it blocked him.

Who would win if he and Thrawn were in a fight, no Force involved? Ezra wanted to believe it would be him — _desperately_ wanted to believe it — but he’d seen Thrawn fight the assassin droids without a weapon, without armor, without the use of the Force. He stared at the flat, deadened _oth’ola endazli_ , wondering how much it aided Thrawn in hand-to-hand combat, if at all. So far as Ezra could tell, it was nothing more than a relic, imbued with the Force but unable to help in any tangible way.

And in any case, it wasn’t imbued with _anything_ right now, so it didn’t matter. Calmly, Thrawn endured Ezra’s narrow-eyed stare, his own posture relaxed and at ease.

“I did not engineer this crash,” he said, his icy voice at odds with his demeanor. “Nor do I believe we are within my scope of the Unknown Regions. Your purrgils took us far from the sectors charted and mapped by the ISD _Chimaera_ and other ships of the Seventh Fleet; I was no more aware of this planet’s inhabitants when we crashed than you were.”

“Well, you sure got to know them fast enough,” Ezra snapped. He could hear the waspishness in his voice and couldn’t even bring himself to dislike it. He paced away from Thrawn, arms crossed tightly over his chest, glowering around at the tiny shelter. “How’d you even know there was an ysalimir on that tree? That thing is _tiny_ and you jumped in to get it as soon as the tree came into view. If _I_ couldn’t see it, I have a hard time believing _you_ could.”

In response, Thrawn reached up silently and adjusted the _oth’ola endzali_ around his neck, untangling the cord with deft fingers. “This wayfinder normally emits a temperature slightly above or below my own. When the ysalimir floated toward us on the river, this pendant stopped emitting anything at all; similarly, the sense of calm it emanates abruptly ended. I have noticed the same effect before; when I first investigated the forest north of the _Chimaera’s_ crash site, the wayfinder stopped working in the same way shortly before I discovered ysalimiri in the nearby trees.” 

Across the shelter, Ezra leaned against the rough wooden wall and glowered down at the ysalimir, his face pinched as he did the math. “So you’ve known about them for, what, fifty-six days now? Fifty-seven?”

There was a slight pause before Thrawn inclined his head. “The woods are filled with them,” he said, reaching through the leaves to stroke the patch of fur on the ysalimir’s back. “Particularly to the north. The purrgils — I assume they are Force-sensitive to some degree — lost control of the _Chimaera_ while passing over a stretch of woods where the ysalimiri are especially thick, congregated around the ruins. I was able to test their radius with my wayfinder, but I was unsure of their effect on true Force abilities until I tested you in person, both through our mental link and with the mole, which you could not sense underground due to the ysalimiri in the tree above you.”

Ezra shook his head. For a long moment, he was unable to form words. This was worse than the reveal that the planet hadn’t always been deserted, worse than Thrawn’s revelation about the Grysks. This was something that affected him _directly_ , a weapon that could be used against him — that already had. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ezra asked. 

Slowly, Thrawn met his eyes. The shrug he gave was little more than a twitch of the shoulders. “You know now.”

It was impossible to read him, pointless to even try to glean anything from his expressionless face. Ezra watched him a moment longer, and then suddenly his legs were moving, a decision made up in his mind without his conscious supervision. He took the branch from Thrawn, encountering only a little resistance before Thrawn suddenly relaxed his hands and let Ezra snatch the branch away. Crossing to the window, Ezra untied the covering and pushed it open, leaning outside.

“That won’t work,” said Thrawn. “The radius is at least ten—”

With an angry huff, Ezra pushed away from the window and stormed past Thrawn again, this time kicking open the door. He walked far away from their camp, shaking rain out of his eyes. When he’d reached the forest surrounding the clearing — twenty meters away from their shelters, at least — he sat the branch down underneath a bush, protecting the ysalimir at least somewhat from the rain. 

Lightning cracked overhead as he approached the shelter. Halfway there, he felt his senses come alive again, his connection to the Force flooding back so strongly as he crossed the threshold that it nearly brought him to his knees.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ezra ground out again, slamming the door shut behind him. He kept his eyes on Thrawn as he fastened the interior barricade, refusing to look away for even a moment. Thrawn had moved in the short time Ezra was gone, and now he lay back on the mattress, turning something over in his hands as he watched Ezra’s face.

The _oth’ola endzali,_ Ezra realized. It was glowing again; he could just make out the silver-blue shine between Thrawn’s fingers. He finished fastening the barricade blindly and let his hands drop, coming forward to loom over Thrawn, who only glanced up at him with a placid expression on his face.

Using the Force — and maybe this was petty of him, but he didn’t care — Ezra floated the _oth’ola endzali_ right out of Thrawn’s hands. He moved it across the room, setting it down in the box of scrap electronics rather than touch it himself. Slowly, Thrawn sat up, leaning his back against the wall and staring at Ezra — finally — with some of the seriousness he deserved.

“Explain yourself,” Ezra said. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks an awful lot like you meant to use those lizards as a weapon. Against _me_.”

There was a tense beat of silence before Thrawn answered.

“Perhaps I did,” he said evenly, tilting his head. It was like he didn’t recognize the danger in Ezra’s tone — or like he did recognize it, but simply didn’t care. “Were we not enemies when we crashed? You were unconscious; it was impossible to predict how you might react once you awoke. It would be wise, then, for me to seek out and secure a weapon.” His eyes swept away from Ezra, moving sightlessly over the carefully organized array of boxes and shelves. “At least, initially,” he added.

“And after I woke up?” Ezra challenged. “When I didn’t attack you?”

Thrawn lifted one shoulder and let it fall in a careless shrug, his gaze drifting across the room. He was working hard to seem unaffected, Ezra could tell — acting like the confrontation didn’t bother him, like Ezra’s stance above him wasn’t triggering his adrenaline, when Ezra could sense the tension wavering between their link. If he made a single aggressive move, he knew Thrawn was ready to dodge or counter it, no matter how relaxed he may seem. 

“You wanna give me an answer?” Ezra asked. “Or are you just gonna sit there and let me draw my own conclusions? Cuz I can guarantee you, they’re aren’t gonna be good.”

Thrawn raised his eyes to meet Ezra’s gaze. “We were enemies,” he said, “and then we were allies, but our alliance was still shaky. Consider your first response to the ysalimir: you recognized the statuaries from my office and concluded I must have somehow engineered the crash to my benefit, evidently to obtain live ysalimiri as a weapon to use against you.”

“Or it could have been an accident,” Ezra interjected. Thrawn’s mouth closed with a delicate but audible click of his teeth, the noise of it giving away his irritation while his face remained calm; he motioned for Ezra to go on. “You could have known about this planet in advance,” Ezra said, “and maybe you even had it lined up in your navcomputer. When the purrgils took control — I don’t know, I don’t really know how they work — they could have somehow been influenced by the vector you already had programmed. Maybe you didn’t mean for the _Chimaera_ to crash, maybe you didn’t mean to take me here with you, but you _definitely_ meant to come here.”

Thrawn waited to speak for a moment, making sure Ezra had finished. “If I intended to use ysalimiri against you in the battle for Lothal,” he said, “I had plenty of access to them on Myrkr. You are correct in that I _did_ intend to use them; you are incorrect in your assessment of my target.”

“Meaning what?” said Ezra.

“Meaning that I could not visit Myrkr without attracting the attention of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine,” said Thrawn, his voice strained. “Both of whom were — and possibly still are — far more dangerous to me than you.”

Ezra scowled, unsure what to say. Thrawn, of course, took advantage of his silence.

“You see?” he said, gesturing to Ezra. “Even now, you don’t trust my intentions. Think how much worse it would have been thirty, forty days ago, before we began your training. You could have killed me outright.”

Ezra opened his mouth, ready to hotly deny this accusation. But he really _had_ meant to kill Thrawn, hadn’t he, when he let the purrgils take the ship? Things had changed, yes, when he woke several days later to find Thrawn had tended to his wounds and built a shelter while Ezra was unconscious — but even then, their alliance had been shaky, as Thrawn said. Full of tension, each of them waiting to see if the other would attack. 

He glowered at Thrawn, considering his options. “There’s an easy way to solve this, you know,” he said.

Thrawn waved his hand dismissively, breaking eye contact. “ _Theoretically_ easy,” he said, his tone uncharacteristically disparaging. “For someone who can properly read minds. Not for a novice who barely bothers to put in the work.”

The insult set Ezra’s temper off again, but he controlled himself, refusing to respond to the bait. The key to keeping calm was that now, after so many days alone with nobody to talk to but Thrawn, he knew him well enough to recognize that Thrawn _didn’t_ _disparage people_ — not even Ezra. For all their fights over the past few months, Thrawn had never talked down to Ezra or insulted him; he kept his voice calm even in the middle of the most fiery arguments, and he only ever showed the slightest hints of annoyance or strain. If he was insulting Ezra now, then he was doing so to stoke Ezra’s temper deliberately — and why would he do that?

To distract him, maybe. To force his attention away from something Thrawn didn’t want to be revealed. 

Ezra took a deep breath, letting his anger out in a sigh. He stepped back, no longer looming over Thrawn — and as soon as he took a seat, he felt something change in the air between them. Something in the channel between their minds — a flicker of emotion too subtle for him to catch. 

Eyeing Thrawn, taking in his posture and the set of his jaw, Ezra realized what it was: when he’d sat down, when he'd stopped looming over the other man, Thrawn had relaxed. It was only a minuscule amount, not noticeable to the naked eye, but the surge of adrenaline from earlier had faded away. 

A memory sparked inside him — the day he’d infiltrated Thrawn’s mind after that unknowing encounter with the ysalimiri, the day Ezra had failed to locate a mole burrowing underground. They’d talked about the Light Side and the Dark Side then, discussed why the Emperor caused pain when he searched through Thrawn’s mind but Ezra — for the most part — did not.

And then Thrawn had said something Ezra hadn’t given a single moment of thought since. The memory of it had been buried completely under the discoveries he’d made minutes later — the existence of the Grysks, the true nature of the _oth’ola endzali._ All of that had left Ezra muddled and confused, making him forget what might have been the most important revelation of the night. 

_Think of something you enjoy, something which makes you feel content,_ Thrawn had said. Until that day, Ezra had never sensed a single emotion from Thrawn; but after relaxing, after remembering the first time he ever went flying in an open-air speeder with his dad, suddenly Ezra had been able to see it all.

Why focus on a happy memory? Why had Thrawn specifically directed him to do that? It wasn’t something Ezra had given much thought to before, but now the answer came to him, swimming gradually through a thick fog in his brain: because as overwhelming as his negative emotions were sometimes, they weren’t something Ezra could share. Not with Thrawn. Not with _anybody_ — not Sabine if she were here, not Kanan if he were alive, not even Maul, who at least stood a chance of understanding.

Because for a Jedi there _was_ no emotion. Only peace.

Ezra let out a slow breath, scrubbing at the side of his face. It was bad enough that he had _all_ the emotions a Jedi wasn’t supposed to feel roiling around inside him — anger, grief, guilt and loneliness and sorrow — but it was somehow worse to admit that he felt any of them at all, to admit that even on a purely emotional level, he’d failed. 

He’d sacrificed everything he had to take down Thrawn, and he’d failed at that. Worse, he’d killed everyone aboard the _Chimaera_ in the process — not intentionally, as an act of war, but out of his own incompetence and panic. Then, to find out that Thrawn wasn’t his true enemy in the first place — to find out about the Grysks, about the Death Star, about Thrawn’s efforts in the Unknown Regions saving backwoods planets from a spot on the Empire’s map — lost Ezra what little justification he had for the _Chimaera’s_ crash. Now, instead of sacrificing 50,000 enemy soldiers to take down a formidable enemy, he understood that he’d taken out 50,000 potential allies only to strand a military genius who was bent on fighting an alien horde more dangerous than even the Empire.

Ezra could follow each of his actions down a straight line to the worst possible fate. In a sense, it was possible that he’d doomed the entire galaxy to invasion by the Grysks, all in a failed attempt to be a hero. And if he were a real Jedi, he would stomach it all — absorb the negative emotions — push through them, be better.

But he couldn’t even do that. He couldn’t even acknowledge that those emotions _existed_.

That was why Thrawn insisted on a happy memory — it was the only type of emotion Ezra could willingly share, the only emotion he felt safe revealing, the only avenue for an open two-way channel between their minds, the only way he could access Thrawn’s emotional state without causing pain. 

But he couldn’t possibly summon up a happy memory now. Not with so much anger boiling beneath the surface, threatening to come out. He stared at Thrawn, his hands clenched on his knees, and knew without even trying that it would be useless. So what were his options? What could he possibly do?

In his head, distant and faint, he heard his own voice: _There is no passion, there is serenity._

And then, stronger, louder, Thrawn’s voice:

_Passion, yet serenity. Emotion, yet peace._

So, with no other options left open to him, Ezra closed his eyes, took a deep breath—

And let the hate flow through him.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra lets the hate flow through him.

The shelter did not blow apart. The trees did not flatten themselves like they would under hurricane winds. The ground didn’t shake; Ezra’s hair didn’t stand on end; the Force didn’t lash out from him in a killing blow.

In fact, nothing happened at all. Everything he’d felt for the past fifty-eight days burned through his blood and set his nerves singing — and then it cooled. 

Then it faded. 

Then it washed away.

And just like before, he felt Thrawn’s mind opening to him, the passageway between them free and clear. Eyes open, Ezra could see Thrawn sitting up and leaning toward him, wariness and curiosity mingling on his face. There was no pain in his face, and even more importantly, no pain inside his mind, where he could feasibly hide it from Ezra. He caught Ezra’s gaze and his eyes widened by a fraction as he realized — Ezra could _see_ him realizing it — that Ezra wasn’t just looking at him, Ezra was _watching_ him back, observing instead of drifting away.

_You’ve never—_

“You’ve never—”

_—been able—_

“—able to keep—”

_—to keep your eyes—_

“—eyes open before,” Thrawn said. Ezra leaned back, overwhelmed for just a minute by the sensation of hearing Thrawn’s thoughts moments before he heard them again as words. He shook his head, clearing it as best he could.

“Just think,” he told Thrawn aloud, his own voice sounding odd to his ears. “Don’t talk. I can hear you fine.”

He felt a swirling of doubt and misgivings before Thrawn gave in. He had questions — tons of them. Ezra could hear them bubbling up, overlapping each other so thoroughly that they were indecipherable until Thrawn chose one to ask at a time. Ezra didn’t give him the chance to do that.

 _Did you know about this planet before we crashed?_ he asked.

Thrawn’s thoughts swirled, fracturing apart and coming back together again. Physically, his face was expressionless, his eyes locked on Ezra’s.

 _I was searching for planets such as this,_ he said, _but I was unaware of this one. I did not have the vector keyed into the_ Chimaera’s _navcomputer, nor did I lead the purrgils here, either deliberately or accidentally._

Ezra sighed through his nose, not breaking eye contact. Every word of it was true; there wasn’t a hint of duplicity anywhere in Thrawn’s mind. He pushed his conclusions toward Thrawn, vaguely hoping he could communicate that way, and felt a ripple through Thrawn’s mind as he processed Ezra’s acceptance and responded with muted — but definitely there — relief.

 _Did you intend to use the ysalimiri against me as a weapon?_ Ezra asked next.

 _Yes,_ said Thrawn. _Initially._

For a long moment, they stared at each other, red eyes blazing into blue. It was difficult to stare at Thrawn for so long — the glow of his eyes made Ezra’s water. There was nothing but confidence in Thrawn’s mind, confidence and not an ounce of uncertainty or nervousness that he would be caught out in a lie.

But he _was_ lying.

 _You don’t intend to use them against me now?_ Ezra asked.

 _No,_ said Thrawn readily.

Lying again. Ezra pursed his lips, unsure how he knew it but certain all the same; across from him, Thrawn raised an eyebrow. 

_If you don’t intend to use them against me,_ said Ezra, _why have you kept them a secret all this time?_

 _You did not trust me,_ said Thrawn. _If you learned of the ysalimiri earlier on in my research, you would have assumed I meant to use them against you, or that I crashed the ship here deliberately._

And Thrawn genuinely hadn’t done that, but still, he was lying. Ezra tried not to frown, working to keep his face as blank as Thrawn’s while he parsed the issue out. 

_You keep saying I didn’t trust you,_ Ezra said finally, working at the problem from a different angle. _And that’s true. I didn’t. But I do now, right? Or at least, I trust you more than I did, a lot more._

Thrawn simply watched him, not responding either physically or mentally.

 _But do you trust me?_ Ezra asked.

Thrawn’s answers had come quickly and easily up to this point; now, seemingly out of nowhere, his brain seemed to stall. The thoughts moved slowly, frozen by Ezra’s words. Maybe he was trying to think of a deflection, Ezra figured, but with Ezra connected so thoroughly to his mind, he couldn’t do it out in the open (so to speak) like he normally would. But even as Ezra thought this, Thrawn’s mind spun into hyperdrive again, this time reverting into Cheunh — no, the coded version of Cheunh he’d made up as a child — no, some other language, something called Meese Caulf—

 _Stop,_ Ezra said, and with the Force he reached into Thrawn’s mind and stopped it from spinning. The words stayed foreign, untranslated, but at least they didn’t keep ciphering into still other languages and codes. 

So now he knew what it looked like when Thrawn was _intentionally_ lying. It looked like a whirlwind, like a completely indecipherable storm of thoughts. But earlier, when he’d said he didn’t intend to use the ysalimiri as a weapon against Ezra, his mind had been placid and calm.

So maybe he didn’t even _know_ he was lying. Ezra processed this without changing his expression, though he could tell right away Thrawn knew he’d caught onto _something_. Thrawn’s eyes flicked away from Ezra, glancing at something deeper in the shelter — and if their minds weren’t connected, Ezra would have never known what it was, not with Thrawn’s lack of pupils. But with Thrawn’s thoughts threaded so neatly through his own, he knew immediately that Thrawn was searching — instinctively, unconsciously — for the _oth’ola_ _endzali_ Ezra had stuffed in the scrap box. 

And just like that, it all clicked into place for Ezra. He’d felt the same emotion from Thrawn before, buried deep in that pale blue nexus of his brain. Now it was so pervasive that it emanated from every individual thread of Thrawn’s mind, rolling off of him in waves.

Fear.

And not fear of the Grysks this time; not some nebulous fear of failure, of a life of uselessness stranded here in the wilderness with no way to help as billions of people died. Not the residual childhood fear of watching Chiss attack Chiss in the narrow caverns of his home.

This was fear of the Jedi as a whole — fear of the Force and what it could do to him, fear for a little girl who’d been abused by an enlisted man, fear of the same girl slamming an entire ship of innocent Chiss into an asteroid field; of a crazed Jedi choking him through a video feed, leaving him helpless as the man beside him leaned forward and took advantage of his plight to press the button, to launch missiles at a flight full of civilians; of the Emperor’s mind ripping through his own, driving him to his knees, holding him absolutely still without even the chance to fight back; of invisible hands pushing him away from the control board as his ship and all the men and women aboard it plummeted to the earth.

Fear of Ezra.

It hit Ezra like a sucker punch, everything becoming clear all at once. No, Thrawn didn’t intend to use the ysalimiri against him — that much was true, at least on the surface. But in the back of his mind, there would always be contingency plans, always a part of him that banked on backup strategies. There were probably at least three methods he’d devised to defeat Ezra, to kill him if necessary, and those ysalimiri served as the world’s best insurance against a Force-user, Dark Side or not.

But more importantly than this, Thrawn didn’t _want_ to use the ysalimiri. He’d seen Ezra as his ally not just since the crash of the _Chimaera_ , but possibly since he’d first learned of Force-users on Lothal. Maybe he'd been more of an asset than an ally then, but the end result was the same. Picking through the web of thoughts and memories in Thrawn’s mind, Ezra could see now just how long Thrawn had been searching for a way to cultivate an alliance, a way to secretly make contact with the Rebels — with Ezra and Kanan in particular, with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Maul, with a blond-haired farmboy Ezra had never even seen before — without the Emperor or Darth Vader finding out.

It was a thin rope to walk, Ezra thought. A thin rope balanced over a fifty-kilometer fall. The network of Force-users Thrawn once hoped to unite had never come to pass — perhaps for the best, if Thrawn’s thoughts were anything to go by — but at least one alliance had been successfully achieved.

And now they were stranded together. Allies, yes. But powerless ones.

Ezra looked into Thrawn’s eyes and saw his own determination staring back at him, knew that Thrawn had heard his thoughts as surely as Ezra had read his.

“Powerless, until now,” Thrawn corrected him.

Ezra’s anger and guilt and grief, thrumming at a low pulse deep within him, faded away. He looked out toward the forest, to the baby ysalimir nestled under a bush there, safe from the rain.

He turned back to Thrawn with a smile.


	16. Chapter 16

The ysalimir was just barely large enough to stretch its neck out along the wooden frame and rest its chin on Thrawn’s shoulder. It blinked at Ezra from there, its eyes wide and its tongue occasionally darting out of its mouth as it stared sideways at him. 

“Walk in front of me,” Ezra said, suddenly stepping to the side and coming to a halt. Thrawn gave him a strange look but didn't stop walking; he moved up from beside Ezra to take the lead without pause. The ysalimir turned its head until it physically couldn’t follow Ezra with its eyes anymore, and then, finally, Ezra fell into step.

“I hate the way that thing looks at me,” he said.

Without glancing back, Thrawn said, “You have a way with animals.”

That was a statement, not a question, so Ezra kept his opinion to himself and just rolled his eyes. It was too early in the morning to let himself be drawn into a conversation with Thrawn, and _definitely_ too early for a staring contest with a Force-resistant lizard; bad enough that they were on this trek in the first place. They’d spent the night before moving their shelters closer to the river again, now that the storm had passed and the floodwaters were starting to recede; Ezra had only _just_ slipped into the truly deep, refreshing stage of sleep when Thrawn woke him again, insisting they travel to the ruins.

Even now, Ezra mostly wished he hadn’t come. He’d wanted to see the ruins ever since he’d caught that first glimpse of them in Thrawn’s memories — but there was _never_ a good reason to be up and about before the sun, in his opinion, even if it meant finally seeing the ruins up close and personal. Nonetheless, he followed Thrawn over the forest floor, circumventing the _Chimaera_ by at least a kilometer as the birds gradually came awake and started rustling in the trees.

It was strange to hear them and know they were out there, but not feel them through the Force. He had the ysalimir to thank for that; it hung onto a light wooden frame that Thrawn wore around his shoulders like a backpack, bouncing just a little bit with every step Thrawn took. 

“The ysalimiri are particularly thick up ahead,” Thrawn said without looking back at Ezra. He parted the long grass before him, holding onto a thorny branch so that Ezra could step past without being pricked. Ezra ducked through the underbrush and stopped in the nearest clear spot, making flinty eye contact with the ysalimir until Thrawn stepped ahead of him again.

“It was a city center once,” Thrawn continued. “The land surrounding the ruins was once a garden; the vegetables grown there attracted moles and the soil contains trace nutrients which continue to do so today. I suspect this is why the ysalimiri congregate there; the trees are particularly healthy, with many of them containing the flammable sap we discovered early on.”

“ _Many_ of them? Like there’s _multiple_ sap-trees out here?” Ezra asked. He stepped over a tree branch recently severed from its trunk by the storm and then paused, eyes narrowing. When he crouched down for a closer look, Thrawn came to a stop ahead of him and turned to watch. “There’s sap on _this_ branch right here,” Ezra said in wonder, touching the half-dried substance with his fingertips.

“Yes,” said Thrawn, adjusting the wooden frame around his shoulders.

“But…” Ezra brought his hand up, sniffing the trace of sap on his fingers. It smelled similar to the fuel he’d put in the _Phantom_ back with Ghost Crew, but with a slightly fetid odor underneath like rotten leaves, and had the same orange tint and gritty-gummy texture as the sap he and Thrawn used to start fires. “But the sap we use is almost impossible to find,” Ezra said slowly, thinking out loud. He wiped his hands clean on the grass before him, but didn’t stand up. “I mean, we have to search for _ages_ to find that stuff.”

Thrawn simply stared at him, either not catching Ezra’s drift or refusing to acknowledge it. The silence made Ezra feel like a not-too-bright student stumbling through an incorrect equation in front of his whole class. 

“Look, here’s what I mean,” he said, pushing to his feet. He put his hands on his hips and scowled as he thought it through; recognizing that this conversation wasn’t going to end anytime soon, Thrawn turned to face him more fully, planting his feet and placing his thumbs beneath the biosupport rack to take some of the weight off his shoulders. “Every time we run out of sap, it takes me _days_ to find a new tree,” Ezra said. “There’s only one that we’ve found so far within a kilometer of our camp, and then there’s two I found farther south.”

“We should consider ourselves lucky, then,” said Thrawn evenly, his eyes shifting down to the sap-coated break on the branch. “We now have another source.”

“That’s _not_ the point,” said Ezra. “Don’t you think it’s an awfully big coincidence that we happen to stumble across this branch just as we’re talking about sap?”

“Yes,” said Thrawn.

“ _No_ ,” said Ezra. “Dude, you never say ‘yes’ when someone asks if you think something’s an ‘awful big coincidence.’ The answer is _never_ yes.”

“I do think it was a coincidence,” said Thrawn. He glanced sideways at the tree next to him, his eyes tracking up through the branches — searching, Ezra assumed, for the broken branch’s origin point. “What do you suppose happened?” Thrawn asked. “If it wasn’t a coincidence.”

Ezra only frowned. Any solution he could come up with brought with it vague implications that there were other people on this planet with them — somebody who could have, for some nebulous reason, severed the branch intentionally and then somehow maneuvered it into position just as Ezra and Thrawn were discussing the flammable sap. Obviously, that hadn’t happened, and there wasn’t any reasonable motivation for someone to do that, either — or at least, not that Ezra could come up with. 

He stared at the branch a moment longer, unwilling to admit defeat. The whole time, Thrawn watched him, waiting for Ezra to speak. 

“Perhaps you are missing some information,” Thrawn said finally. “As I said earlier, these trees are particularly thick around the ruins.”

“Yeah, about that,” said Ezra, his head shooting up. “Did you miss the part where I just said it takes me _days_ to find sap when we run out? How long have you known about the whole kriffing _forest_ of sap-trees next to the ruins?”

The ysalimir’s tongue flicked out, brushing the bare skin of Thrawn’s neck. He twitched his shoulder up, gently jostling the ysalimir until it stopped licking him.

“That is some of the information you were missing,” he admitted. “First, yes, there is a source of sap-trees here. But second, the trees near our base did not ‘run dry,’ as I led you to believe. They are still producing standard amounts of sap.”

He said this without a hint of shame or sheepishness. Ezra stared at Thrawn for a long moment, his mouth set in a firm line. He wasn’t sure if he was shocked more by the sixty-day lie or by the audacity with which Thrawn confessed to it.

“The trees _didn’t_ _run_ _dry_?” he repeated.

“No,” said Thrawn. He looked down at the broken branch. With his foot, he turned it over and exposed the sap-covered wound to the light. 

“So it was all a wild bantha chase?” Ezra asked.

“Pardon?” said Thrawn, glancing up with a frown

“You just sent me off looking for trees to get rid of me?” Ezra said. Thrawn crouched down, collecting the branch from the ground and setting it upright against the tree.

“No, not solely for that reason,” he said. “It was also to test your skills with the Force.”

Ezra opened his mouth to call krayt-spit, but Thrawn wasn’t finished.

“As you’ve said, the Force is in all living things, yes?” he asked. “As such, I believed you could identify sap-trees using the Force, and I needed some way to confirm my hypothesis. You located trees south of camp fairly quickly; you did not locate any trees north of camp, where the ysalimiri presence is particularly thick. There is not quite enough evidence to confirm my hypothesis, however, as you only ever found two.”

Ezra shook his head, his lip curled in disgust. He couldn’t muster up any words.

“You’re angry,” Thrawn noted.

“What, did you think there was a statute of limitations on being a dick?” Ezra said. “You thought if you just waited a month or two to tell me, I wouldn’t care?”

Thrawn eyed him without saying anything in response. He wrapped his hands around the shoulder straps of the wooden frame, adjusting it a little. “I still recommend you visit the ruins today,” he said blandly.

Ezra threw back his head in exasperation and started walking. “I’m not going to turn back now just because you’re an asshole,” he said as he passed Thrawn. “I _know_ you’re an asshole. This is just another new development in a long series of dick moves. It doesn't change a thing.”

Thrawn fell into step next to him, this time walking on Ezra’s right side so that the ysalimir couldn’t make aggressive eye contact with him. Ezra couldn’t tell if this was a deliberate move — a subtle apology, maybe — or not.

“You’re not going to like the next development,” Thrawn admitted.

Ezra’s steps faltered. He shot a wary look Thrawn’s way, but couldn’t read the other man’s face. 

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“The ruins,” Thrawn said.

“They _are_ inhabited?” Ezra exclaimed, his mind jumping immediately to the most outrageous conclusion. He looked behind him at the broken branch. “You mean there really _are_ people here?”

“No,” said Thrawn, rocking his head from side to side. “I didn’t say that. Still, I suspect this next development will require some … persuasion.”

For a long moment, they walked in silence, Ezra squinting at Thrawn and Thrawn refusing to look back at him. 

“Okay…” said Ezra when it became clear Thrawn wasn’t going to speak. “So start persuading, then.”

Visibly hesitant, Thrawn shook his head as much as he could with the ysalimir resting against his neck. “You will understand in a moment,” he said. “When we arrive.”

If it wasn’t for the ysalimir, Ezra would have considered this a challenge to find the answers in Thrawn’s mind. He shelved his questions for now, keeping his eyes on the trees as they walked. It wasn’t long before he spotted his first wild ysalimir sitting on a high branch above them — and it was so much larger than the infant on Thrawn’s shoulder that for a moment Ezra’s heart stopped and he couldn’t be sure what he was looking at. His mind jumped back to the broken branch, to his brief flash of relief mixed with trepidation when he thought the planet might be occupied. Then he realized he wasn’t looking at a sentient alien at all, only a giant lizard.

Well, a Force-resistant giant lizard. With fur.

They became more common after that. Ysalimiri were visible every few meters, and the closer they got to the ruins, the more they saw. Soon, Ezra could make out multiple ysalimiri per tree — and as Thrawn had noted earlier, it seemed like many of the trees were sap-trees, with leaves shaped like four-pronged spikes just like those on the broken branch Ezra had stumbled over earlier. 

And then, as they wove through the thick undergrowth and what seemed like a veritable wall of saplings, the ruins abruptly came into view. Ezra hesitated, his pace slowing as they walked nearer to the crumbling walls; there was nothing out of the ordinary that he could see, but Thrawn’s earlier warning had him on high alert, his eyes flicking from one end of the ruins to the next as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to be outraged about. Engravings covered the ancient walls of the ruins, so scarred with time that Ezra could barely make them out. He hesitated at the entrance, running his hand over an illustration carved into the stone — a musteline creature in long robes, with a long, cylindrical weapon or staff of some sort clutched in its furry paw.

Thrawn, meanwhile, quickened his pace instead, slipping the wooden frame off his back and leaving it propped up against an old stone wall. He stepped gracefully over moss-covered stones that had come loose from the structure years ago, disappearing into the more intact sections of the ruins. 

“Through here,” he called.

Shaking himself, Ezra followed. He rounded a low, crumbling wall and ducked into an alcove, where the floor was cracked but still in place and the walls and ceiling had both been repaired to a certain degree — likely by Thrawn in an effort to make the ruins functional as a shelter. Thrawn sat inside, waiting for Ezra on a stone shelf — or perhaps an altar — with his arms crossed over his chest. All around him on the flat slab of stone were pieces of debris from the _Chimaera_ : vibroblades and blasters, tools and soldering kits, comlinks and loops of microfilament, power cells and heating coils. All of it in pristine condition. 

And beside him, fully constructed and blinking as it searched for a signal, was a high-power transmitter.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra and Thrawn concoct a plan.

“I just — literally, dude, I can’t even call on the Force to calm myself down,” said Ezra, his shoulders slumped and his voice flat as he stared at the transmitter. He could see Thrawn watching him, a speculative look pinned to his face as he waited for Ezra to either blow up or let the whole thing slide.

With a deep sigh, Ezra shook his head. “How long have you had this thing?” he asked wearily.

“Twenty-seven days,” Thrawn said. He threw another brief, wary glance Ezra’s way before shifting his attention to the transmitter, carefully adjusting the long line of its antenna.

“Stop looking at me like I’m gonna explode,” Ezra said patiently, still not sure whether he _was_ going to explode or not.

“My apologies,” said Thrawn.

Ezra’s temper spiked irrationally at that, but he forced it back down. “Just walk me through your reasoning here,” he said. “I mean, you’ve had this thing pretty much half the time we’ve _been_ here. Why not use it? _Have_ you been using it? Did you get a response?”

“I have not used it,” Thrawn said. He took his hands away from the transmitter and clasped them in his lap instead. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You’re not angry?”

“I’m fine, dude,” said Ezra, not sure he was. “Move past it. You said you _haven’t_ used it?”

“Perhaps you should take a moment,” Thrawn advised him. “Let the hate flow through you, like last night.”

“Oh, the hate _has_ flowed through me,” Ezra said. “Some would say the hate is flowing through me literally as we speak. But trust me. We’re good.”

Thrawn looked at him doubtfully, but eventually acquiesced. “I have not been entirely honest with you, Commander Bridger,” he said.

“No shit,” Ezra said, kicking up a broken shard of stone from the ground.

Thrawn accepted this with another amicable nod, turning his eyes to the array of electronics on the altar next to him. He picked up a blaster and turned it over in his hands, deftly hitting the release. With a mechanical click, he slid a charge pack into place and turned the blaster to the side so Ezra could see.

The lights on the side display were lit up, the blaster set to stun.

“It’s _live?_ ” Ezra breathed. Thrawn leaned forward a little with his arm outstretched, silently inviting Ezra to take the blaster. Ezra weighed it in his hand, turning to face the trees around him. For a moment, he considered pulling the trigger, just to be sure — but the moment passed, and he handed the blaster back to Thrawn.

“The barrel was dented when I recovered it,” Thrawn said, setting it aside. “I disassembled it, then melted and reformed the durasteel. It fires true.”

Ezra said nothing, his eyes scanning the rest of the items. When his gaze rested on a vibroblade, Thrawn picked it up and handed it to him without being asked; Ezra ran his thumb over the flat button on the grip and went still as the knife blade shimmered with faintly-visible vibrations.

“All of this stuff works?” he asked, scanning the rest of it, the vibroblade warm in his hand.

“Yes,” said Thrawn. “Simple repairs, of course. Nothing requiring a workshop or tools beyond what you see here. I am not a magician; I am, however…” He seemed to hesitate. “...a _bit_ more competent than you seem to expect.”

Oh, so that wasn’t hesitation at all. That was a pause for _dramatic effect._ Ezra resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You can’t pretend to be offended when _you’re_ the one who said you couldn’t salvage anything from the wreck,” he said. He threw his free hand out in a sweeping gesture, encompassing everything on the altar. “Literally _all_ of this is salvaged from the wreck! You lied to me.”

“You couldn’t be trusted,” said Thrawn, with no remorse evident in his face.

“ _You_ couldn’t _trust_ ,” Ezra snapped, irritation wrinkling his brow again. “There’s a difference.”

Surprisingly, Thrawn didn’t argue that point. What he did was, in Ezra’s estimation, ten times worse than arguing. He slipped off the altar, drawing himself up to full height and looking down at Ezra. There was a grave set to his face that Ezra didn’t like at all; even worse, Ezra knew instinctively that Thrawn’s sudden mood change wasn’t in response to anything Ezra had said. It was like Thrawn had merely played along with Ezra’s moods until now, patiently tolerating Ezra’s reactions to the lie until he could reasonably brush them aside and turn Ezra’s attention to something more serious.

“For at least three years,” Thrawn said, “the Grysks have tracked my movements within the Imperial Navy. They kept tabs on my fleet for at least one year. What do you remember about my brother, Mitth'ras'safis?”

Ezra’s eyes flickered down to the pendant around Thrawn’s neck. He was thrown by the unexpected change of subject. 

“Your brother … _who?_ I remember the one called Vuras, but...”

“Vuras,” said Thrawn patiently. “Kivu’ras’sa. Mitth’ras’safis. Thrass. What do you remember about him?”

Ezra digested the different names — which called up all sorts of other questions he’d been meaning to ask for a while, but he pushed them down. Instead, he concentrated on the question at hand, at what he’d been able to glean about Vuras — Thrass — whatever — from Thrawn’s memories.

“He’s Force-sensitive,” he said. “He’s older than you. Uh, he was in the military, like you, only he joined when he was a little kid, as a cadet or something. And he made that necklace for you, with some of his life energy inside.”

It looked like there was something more Thrawn expected from him, or perhaps something Thrawn wanted to add. But after a moment, he only nodded and moved on.

“Thrass was a navigator,” Thrawn explained. “Chiss Force-sensitives — we call the gift Third Sight — are rare, and mostly female. Their sensitivity manifests primarily in the form of precognitive abilities; they are capable of navigating through the Unknown Regions, where most Imperial nav systems fail. But the Sight fades in time, leaving most adults with little to no ability.”

Ezra shifted from foot to foot, growing uncomfortable under Thrawn’s gaze. He stopped moving entirely when he saw Thrawn’s eyes harden.

“The Grysks have acquired some Chiss navigators of their own,” he said. “Children, likely sold into slavery — either by their own parents, which is unlikely due to the class structure of the Ascendancy, or by a middleman taking advantage of political dissent to make a profit. The reasons are not important for our purposes; what is important is that the Grysks are watching this sector, Ezra. They know we are here somewhere, though they don’t know exactly where. And at least one of their ships — the flagship, without a doubt, and possibly more — has a Chiss Force-sensitive onboard.”

Ezra looked again at the high-power transmitter; he could feel understanding start to coalesce in his brain. “You want to _lure_ them here,” he said incredulously. “Like I lured the purrgils.”

A faint smile touched Thrawn’s lips. He stepped back, leaning against the altar. “Precisely,” he said.

“But _why_?” Ezra said. “I thought the Grysks were some big, awful threat — worse than the Empire. Why would you _invite_ them to come kill us?” 

The smile on Thrawn’s face got disarmingly wide. “Because we can take them,” he said. “Not only that, but we can take their _ships_.”

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Thrawn’s smile did not fade.

“You’re crazy,” Ezra said. 

“Not at all,” said Thrawn. “I have all the resources I need right here. Why shouldn’t we?”

“Because it’s you versus probably a thousand Grysks,” Ezra snapped.

“It’s us against a thousand Grysks,” Thrawn corrected him. “And why shouldn’t we at least try?” He reached out, touching the transmitter gently. “I could signal the Empire or your friends for the rest of our lives and never make contact. How many friends do you have looking for you? How do you know they aren’t already dead in their war against the Empire?”

Before Ezra could get out an answer, Thrawn said.

“I have one, perhaps two, who would be willing to mount a search for me. And I am not confident either of them will survive their petty war. In my own part of the galaxy, I have more who would be willing, but perhaps not permitted, to mount a rescue operation — and in any case, I have no way of knowing whether they’ve even been informed that I am missing.” He spread his palms out wide. “Our options, Ezra, are to lure the Grysks or to die here. Trust me when I say we are both too valuable to die on a deserted planet while our people wage war.”

Ezra chewed the inside of his cheek; adrenaline beat its way through his veins and he couldn’t help but stare at the transmitter, thinking of Sabine, of Hera. Neither of them would abandon their war against the Empire just to find him, he knew. Thrawn was right about that much. And so long as they were active participants in the war, they were risking their lives every day.

He pictured himself growing to be an old man here, his days filled with fishing and mind-numbing chores. He pictured himself someday laying Thrawn to rest with the other members of the Chimaera. Would he join them someday? Would he feel himself fading and lay down in the graveyard to die?

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and said, “Okay. So. We use the Force to lure the Grysks here. Then what?”

Thrawn’s smile returned with a vengeance. “It will be similar to when you summoned the purrgils, yes,” he said. “But not the same. In this case, it will not be _you_ sending out a signal through the Force. The signal will come from someone else; you will only be amplifying it.”

Ezra’s brow furrowed. “What, then you want to transmit a message in Cheunh?” He could tell by the blank look on Thrawn’s face that this wasn’t right. “I’m kind of, you know … the only Force-sensitive here,” said Ezra awkwardly. “I can amplify a _regular_ signal, but I can’t amplify a _Force_ signal if there’s … no one…”

Thrawn’s left hand was clasped around his _oth’ola endzali._ Ezra’s mouth kept moving, but for a moment, no sound came out.

“No way,” Ezra said.

Thrawn nodded.

“You really think that’ll work?” Ezra held out his hand, silently asking for the pendant, and to his faint surprise, Thrawn untied the leather cord without hesitation and dropped the _oth’ola endzali_ into Ezra’s palm. He examined it carefully, feeling nothing — not with the ysalimiri so close. He glanced up at the transmitter, looking at it with new eyes.

“You are, as you say, our only Force-sensitive,” Thrawn acknowledged. “Which is why we must keep you a secret as long as we can. When you hold Thrass’s wayfinder, can you tell he was Force-sensitive?”

Ezra frowned down at it, thinking back to the few times he’d held it before. “No,” he said. “It’s not like that, really. I can tell there’s some sort of Force presence there, but at the same time, I can tell it’s — I mean —” He glanced up at Thrawn, an apologetic look crossing his face. “—I can tell it’s not alive,” he finished. “It just kind of … feels like a pendant, but with the Force presence of a dead sentient attached to it. Almost like a ghost.”

He expected this news to disappoint Thrawn; instead, he looked like a particularly satisfied Loth-cat.

“As I expected,” he said. “In that case, by broadcasting the signal from that wayfinder, you will tell whichever Chiss navigator is in this system exactly what she hopes to find: the precise location of a lone Chiss in possession of an _oth’ola endzali._ There may well be other Chiss in this sector, but there should only be one fitting those criteria.”

“You,” said Ezra, staring down at the _oth’ola endzali_ with a smile. “So you bait the trap. You let them know you’re shipwrecked here; you make them think you’re alone. And then when they arrive here—”

Thrawn met Ezra’s eyes, sharing his smile.

“We strike,” he said.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out ysalimiri make pretty nifty pets. Beware of non-ysalimir animal death.

Ezra had just slipped into a deep, restful sleep that night when somebody shook him awake. He opened bleary eyes, knowing somehow, instinctively, that he was safe, and squinted through the darkness until he could make out Thrawn sitting next to him and peering down into Ezra’s face.

“You said there are no Force-resistant beings,” Thrawn said without preamble.

Groaning, Ezra scrubbed at his eyes and sat up, forcing Thrawn to shift backward where he was kneeling on the floor. 

“There are Force-sensitive animals, yes?” Thrawn said.

“ _Dude_ , give me a minute,” Ezra said. He could hear sleepiness dragging his voice down to a whispery croak. Belatedly, he realized the ysalimir’s wooden frame was nowhere to be seen; his eyes flickered down to Thrawn’s shoulders, noting the lizard’s absence and then realizing he could feel the familiar, clinical cascade of Thrawn’s thoughts. In the darkness, Thrawn followed Ezra’s gaze and seemed to immediately understand his unspoken question.

“I placed the ysalimir fifteen meters away,” he said, “so that it would not cloud your mind.”

“It doesn’t cloud my _mind_ ,” Ezra said, then decided it wasn’t worth an argument — at least, not this late at night. “What do you want?” he said.

“There are Force-sensitive animals, yes?” said Thrawn again, in the exact same tone and rhythm as before. Ezra shot him a beady-eyed glare.

“Yes,” he said, “there are Force-sensitive animals.”

“The creature which assisted you at the Battle of Atollon,” Thrawn persisted, “was a Force-sensitive, yes? Although not necessarily an animal.”

“The Bendu, yeah,” said Ezra. He adjusted the blanket over his legs and scooted back so he could lean against the wall, feeling more awake now.

“And the purrgils,” said Thrawn. His eyes shifted away from Ezra, staring into the middle-distance. “I encountered a rare species of coral on my homeworld once,” he said. “It existed in some of the oceanic cave systems beneath the icebergs of Rentor, and it was easily accessible to any small and capable hiker, though I have never seen it mentioned in ecological journals. Although it was not capable of physical movement, it was able to speak to me through a mental connection, much as we speak to each other through the Force.”

He gestured from his head to Ezra’s.

“Yeah,” said Ezra, a little warily. “That sounds like a Force-sensitive to me. I never heard of Force-sensitive _coral_ , though, but I guess—” He rubbed his eyes furiously, shaking his head. “What’s this all about, Thrawn? You didn’t just wake me up to ask a bunch of questions about animals, did you?”

“No,” said Thrawn. He settled back on the floor, legs crossed and hands clasped around his knees. “Force-sensitives can conceal their presence from other Force-sensitives.”

There was a beat of silence. It was Ezra’s first instinct to answer Thrawn, but he realized just in time that this wasn’t a question. His eyes narrowed. He remembered what Kanan had told him about the Republic — about Jedi rumors, things he heard from other Padawans or his Master Depa Billaba, stuff about a Sith Lord hiding in plain sight, unsensed by any of the Jedi Masters all around him. And it had been true, obviously. Somehow, some way, the Emperor had managed to conceal himself even in the midst of Coruscant, surrounded by thousands of Jedi.

“Where are you going with this?” Ezra asked. Thrawn’s eyes shifted to meet his.

“If you are correct that no living creature can be Force-null,” said Thrawn, “it follows that the ysalimiri are in fact _Force-sensitive_ , and merely using the Force concealing their presence and their nature from you. Concealing it so well, evidently, that they somehow prevent other Force-sensitives in the area from connecting to the Force as well.”

He tilted his head at Ezra, as if waiting for a meaningful reply.

“Yeah,” said Ezra tentatively. “I guess that’s possible.”

“Possible or likely?” Thrawn asked.

“Likely,” said Ezra, fighting back a stab of irritation. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“I don’t pretend to understand the Force,” said Thrawn mildly. “That’s your arena. I’m only working through the problem logically and stating my conclusions. And you are skilled with animals,” Thrawn continued. “Force-sensitive or not, you are capable of making connections with them, as you did with the purrgils.”

Ezra sat up a little straighter, coming wide awake as understanding dawn. “I could connect with the ysalimiri?” he asked.

Thrawn raised an eyebrow. “ _Could_ you?”

“Well, that’s why you woke me, isn’t it?” said Ezra impatiently. He reached under the bed for his boots and almost missed the faint smile that touched Thrawn’s lips.

“It is,” he said, extricating the boots from under the bed frame and handing them to Ezra. He moved back so Ezra had room to put them on. “Circumstances are optimal for an experiment. We have an infant ysalimir, already accustomed to your presence. It will be more malleable than the adults; a good opportunity to learn and strengthen your skills.”

“If I can do it,” Ezra said, excitement sizzling inside him as he tightened the knots on his boots. He stood quickly, almost running into Thrawn in his haste to leave the shelter. He was vaguely aware of Thrawn following him as he marched a few yards toward the other hut, then stopped, turning back. He could just barely make out Thrawn’s silhouette thanks to the faint glow of his eyes; when he concentrated, calling upon the Force, he could see everything more clearly.

Including the amusement on Thrawn’s face.

“What?” Ezra demanded.

Silently, Thrawn pointed behind him to the west, and Ezra realized he was heading the wrong way. Face burning, he redirected himself, allowing Thrawn to lead him to the ysalimir — at a much slower pace.

Within a few meters, his connection to the Force dulled all at once, leaving him with the unpleasant stomach-dropping sensation of going blind and deaf without any warning. With his vision enhanced by the Force, the sudden change was especially bad — he stumbled forward for a few steps and then stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Behind him, Thrawn stopped, too, though Ezra could only surmise it was out of camaraderie. The Chiss certainly didn’t have any issues with night vision.

Carefully, Ezra continued on, only stopping again when he found the ysalimir perched near the base of a tree; Thrawn’s wooden frame lay on the ground, propped up against the trunk with the ysalimir’s claws still sunk deep into it. With a pang, Ezra thought of the abandoned farm droids he’d seen from time to time in Lothal’s countryside; it was so strange seeing the wooden frame unoccupied on the ground that it felt somehow akin to those rusted droids, left to molder in fields by their masters.

A wave of sadness rolled through him, something more complex than he could articulate; the fact that he associated the wooden frame so strongly with Thrawn, who was once his number one enemy, and that seeing the wooden frame empty made him feel not just sad but almost grief-stricken; that it made him think of home, that he could even associate these thoughts and feelings with Thrawn in the first place — all of it almost overwhelmed him and he simply let it, not embracing the emotion so much as he just allowed it to come and go. He crouched down next to the frame and extended his hand palm-down; the ysalimir’s nostrils flared, and after a long moment of hesitation, it extended its thin, dry tongue and brushed Ezra’s fingers.

“Do you require my assistance?” Thrawn asked, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.

Gently, the ysalimir butted its head against Ezra’s knuckles, its eyes sliding closed again.

“No,” Ezra said, matching Thrawn’s soft tone. Behind him, he heard the soft brush of Thrawn’s feet over the grass, as if he had shifted position — or turned to go. “But you can stay,” Ezra added without thinking about it.

Thrawn said nothing.

“If you want to,” Ezra said. “I mean, if you’re not going to sleep.”

He didn’t glance behind him; somehow it didn’t matter to him how Thrawn reacted to this invitation. He could appreciate it as a peace offering or he could revile it as an empty sign of friendship from a former enemy, or he could think nothing whatsoever — and it wouldn’t change anything at all. He contented himself with watching the ysalimir instead, with admiring the coarseness of its skin contrasted with the softness of its small patch of fur, appreciating for the first time the intelligent sheen to its eyes.

Silently, Thrawn stepped up next to Ezra. He stood there for a moment, head tilted to the side as he watched the ysalimir nuzzle Ezra’s hand.

“He likes you already,” Thrawn murmured, and sat down with his back against the tree. 

“He likes anybody,” Ezra said, but he was smiling nonetheless. “Look how quickly he took to _you_.”

Thrawn reached up, gently stroking the ysalimir’s back. He was careful to avoid contact with Ezra’s hand. “No accounting for taste,” he said. He removed his hand and leaned back against the tree, closing his eyes and relaxing just enough that for a second Ezra thought he intended to sleep there. 

“Perhaps,” said Thrawn, not opening his eyes, “the ysalimiri developed their unique capabilities as an evolutionary response to Force-sensitive predators. If so, your objective may be nothing more than to prove to this ysalimir — and subsequently, as many others as you can — that you are not a threat.”

Ezra eyed Thrawn; he attempted a quippy tone and got something different instead, something tentative and somber. “Do I look like a threat to you?”

“Not currently,” said Thrawn, his voice deceptively mild. It seemed to Ezra that something shifted in Thrawn’s posture — a subtle change that made his relaxed shoulders and gently closed eyes seem somehow artificial. Feigned. He remembered — not for the first time, not for the last — the memories he’d seen in Thrawn’s mind of Force-users like him (and not just _like_ him; _including_ him) using their connection to the Force to push — to choke — to torture.

To kill.

 _No wonder he likes these things,_ Ezra thought, scratching the ysalimir on the chin. There wasn’t much he could do to earn Thrawn’s trust, either — not after all he’d done — but it was a good sign, at least, that Thrawn was willing to sit here in silence with Ezra as he worked.

And it might be too late for Thrawn, but it wasn’t too late to win over the ysalimir. Not by a long shot. 

* * *

Thrawn pushed away from the tree in the early hours of the morning, climbing to his feet and brushing past Ezra without a word. Engrossed in the ysalimir — and assuming Thrawn would be right back — Ezra didn’t even glance up as he walked by. It wasn’t until dawn broke that he glanced around the camp and realized Thrawn hadn’t simply gone back to his shelter to sleep; the door was propped open to let in the sun, and the woven mat inside was clearly unoccupied.

Ezra stood with a frown, chucking the ysalimir under the chin as a goodbye and then leaving it on its wooden frame. He walked several meters away, waiting for the Force connection to come surging back. Eyes closed, he plunged down the mental highwire connecting his brain to Thrawn’s, wasting no time on pleasantries.

But after thirty seconds, he opened his eyes again, none the wiser and frowning even deeper than before. He couldn’t sense Thrawn’s presence at all.

 _The ruins,_ he thought, turning to face north. If Thrawn was at the ruins, of course Ezra couldn’t sense him; he’d be surrounded by ysalimiri right now. That was the most obvious conclusion — he knew now that Thrawn had sneaked off to the ruins almost every day since they were stranded here — but did that make it the right one?

He hesitated, debating his options in the middle of the camp with his toes on the edge of the fire ring. He could go after Thrawn — track him down, figure out what he was doing, see if he needed help — or he could stay here. Bond with the ysalimir, sure. Maybe get some sleep.

Arms crossed tightly over his abdomen, Ezra turned and looked at the ysalimir, silently asking it for advice. It gazed back at him placidly, doing an uncanny impression of the blank stare Thrawn turned on him whenever Ezra asked a stupid question.

With a sigh, Ezra trudged back to the ysalimir. “Fine,” he muttered, gathering the wooden frame up in his arms. “But you’re coming with me.”

He swung the frame over his shoulders, wincing at the awkward fit. The straps were way too big for him, and not adjustable, but he shifted it around until he achieved a workable balance, hunching forward just slightly to keep the frame from sliding off down his side. He set off at a quick pace, eager to make it to the ruins before the sun was too high; for now, the day was still cool, but within two hours, he’d be sweating through his undershirt, and his jacket — necessary at the moment — would be completely and utterly abandoned.

He trudged vaguely northward, judging his position partially by the rising sun and partially by his familiarity with the woods. The ysalimir bobbed along behind him, its chin striking his skull from time to time as he stepped over logs or stumbled on uneven ground, irritatingly graceless with his connection to the Force blocked. He’d have to make his own frame, Ezra mused; Thrawn’s didn’t fit him right at all, and it couldn’t be comfortable for the ysalimir—

—only why would he need to tote around an ysalimir? Ezra grimaced in chagrin; he’d gotten so attached to the ysalimir over the past thirty-three hours that he’d forgotten it wasn’t his friend — or his pet — or even, strictly speaking, his weapon. He was only getting used to it so _Thrawn_ could someday, hypothetically, use it against somebody else. 

He hiked through the woods silently for the next thirty minutes, falling into an even pace and letting his thoughts drift away. Thrawn seemed awfully certain the two of them could handle the Grysks — or if not certain, at least optimistic. Maybe it was feasible if it was just the two of them against one ship — a tiny ship; a shuttle, maybe — but there was no guarantee the Grysks wouldn’t send a militia.

What if the Grysks _did_ only send one ship, and he and Thrawn successfully defeated them, only to leave the planet’s atmosphere and find an entire battalion of warships waiting to pull them in? Could the two of them escape from a brig together? Steal a starship — one with hyperdrive capabilities, ideally — and get away? Maybe so, but that was assuming they weren’t simply killed on sight. Or separated from each other, placed in different holding cells or even on different ships.

Or brainwashed. 

Thrawn said the Grysks were capable of brainwashing, and nobody knew how; it was Ezra’s instinct to think, _Sure, but they can’t brainwash a Jedi_ — but he didn’t know that for sure, and it was hard to keep up his usual bravado; more and more lately, he felt as though his years of self-confidence and boasting hadn’t helped him at all. Once he’d seen them as a survival skill — or at the very least, as a necessary part of being a part-time thief and conman — but the longer he stayed here, the more he felt he’d gotten by on other things. Luck, certainly, but also instinct and skill, and of course his connection to the Force.

Maybe it was Thrawn rubbing off on him, Ezra reflected. The grand admiral was proud — especially of his crew — but never egotistical. Even in their early days here, he’d never hesitated to ask Ezra for help when a task would be more efficiently completed by a Jedi than a regular Chiss. It was hard to hold onto an inflated sense of self-confidence when constantly faced with that. 

He was still musing over the flaws in Thrawn’s plan (and the more he thought about it, the more there seemed to be) when the hair on the back of his neck stood up. 

Three things happened very fast after that: 

One: 

Ezra felt his heart rate skyrocket, his pulse pounding in his neck even as he lowered his head in an instinctive duck. 

Two: 

Behind him, the ysalimir froze on its wooden frame, going stock-still. Ezra dropped down into a low crouch, his palms hitting the ground, a twig scraping at his skin as he started to turn.

And three:

Just as he registered the low rumble of a growl behind him, an arrow shot directly over Ezra’s head from the north. To the south, becoming visible just as Ezra whipped his head around to follow it, the arrow whizzed right through the left eye of a massive four-legged animal, its teeth bared, its claws outstretched.

There was an audible thunk as the arrowhead struck bone. Struck _skull_ , Ezra corrected himself, scrambling backward across the grass. His shoulder struck somebody else — Thrawn, he knew instinctively, not even glancing behind him to check — and he grabbed onto Thrawn’s arm blindly, pulling himself to his feet as he watched the animal take two more wobbly steps before falling to the ground.

The arrow snapped on impact; the animal went still. After a long moment, able to hear nothing but the beat of his own heart in his ears, Ezra started breathing again.

“What—?” he said, and finally turned to look at Thrawn. He pulled up short, his first question dying on his lips as he registered the sleek hunting bow clutched loosely in Thrawn’s right hand. “Where the hell did you get that?” he asked instead. 

Thrawn shot him a puzzled look. “The camp,” he said. 

Belatedly, Ezra recognized the bow — but his question still stood. “You brought it with you to the ruins?” he asked. “Why?”

“I’ve been hunting,” Thrawn said, his puzzlement deepening. “What did you think I was doing?”

Ezra opened his mouth, then closed it again, just shaking his head. He turned and looked at the animal again — it resembled something like a bear, he thought. “I didn’t know we _had_ things like that here,” he murmured.

Thrawn didn’t respond for a moment, simply staring at the dead animal. Silently, he wedged his bow against the outside of his foot and unstrung it with deft fingers, bending the shaft with apparent ease. “I have seen signs of them before,” he said, sounding mostly unfazed. “Though until today, the largest animal I’ve encountered has been a hoofed, ruminant mammal much like the dugar-dugars of Batuu.”

Cautiously, Ezra approached the bear. Already, it seemed somewhat deflated, like something intangible had fled from it and left its body smaller than before. He nudged its paw with his foot and then drew back. When he turned around again, he found Thrawn studying him.

“What?” Ezra asked.

A faint smile touched Thrawn’s lips — or maybe it was a trick of the light.

“You ducked,” he said.

They stared at each other for a moment, neither one speaking.

“...Yeah?” Ezra said finally. “So?”

Thrawn’s expression didn’t change. “ _Why_ did you duck?” he asked.

Ezra frowned, tracing back over the moments just before the bear attacked. He remembered the hair on the back of his neck standing up, the ysalimir going still.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Just instinct, I guess.”

“Instinct?” Thrawn repeated. His tone was completely neutral; Ezra couldn’t tell if Thrawn was doubting him or asking him to elaborate. Before he could figure it out, Thrawn said, “Instinct is informed by the senses. Perhaps you heard something in the woods which alerted you to the presence of another living being — though not on a conscious level.”

Ezra’s frown deepened. “I don’t think so,” he said, then hesitated. “The ysalimir...” he started.

Thrawn tilted his head to the side, saying nothing.

“The ysalimir went still behind me,” Ezra said. “It even stopped breathing. I noticed — but I was already on alert when that happened. I don’t know…”

“You simply sensed it?” Thrawn suggested.

Now it was Ezra’s turn to be silent. He craned his neck, looking doubtfully at the ysalimir on his shoulder. Simply _sensing_ things was all fine and well when you had the Force, but when there was a tiny lizard on your back, actively blocking you…

Ezra’s eyes widened. He looked at Thrawn, who was now smiling openly.

“Obviously,” said Thrawn with a tiny shrug, “it’s only a fraction of your typical capabilities. But the ysalimir _did_ allow some small portion of the Force to reach you.”

“We _think_ it did,” Ezra corrected him swiftly, not daring to hope. But his heart was soaring at the possibility of seeing results so soon, anyway. Thrawn acknowledged the correction with an amiable nod, his eyes drifting to the ysalimir and then to the dead bear.

“Allow me,” Thrawn said without glancing Ezra’s way. He held his hand out, gesturing for something. It took Ezra a moment to realize he wanted the ysalimir’s wooden frame; he shrugged out of it quickly, careful not to jostle the ysalimir, and handed it over. 

“I’ll walk ahead,” Thrawn said as he secured the frame on his shoulders. He was already walking, taking brisk steps past Ezra, heading toward camp. “You handle the bear,” he added.

Ezra watched him go, scowling until Thrawn passed the fifteen-meter mark and the Force came rushing back in. He took a moment to savor it, letting the sizzling mix of adrenaline and content sink into his skin, and then raised his hand toward the bear and lifted it with ease; the real trick was maneuvering its body back through the trees to camp, where Thrawn would undoubtedly do ghastly things with it in the name of survival. 

Ezra did his best not to think about this as he guided it slowly toward the shelters.


	19. Chapter 19

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” Ezra asked.

Across from him, Thrawn sat on the altar in the ruins, surrounded by weapons and technology. He held the transmitter in his hands, toying with the antenna, but his eyes kept straying to the blasters — charged and ready to shoot — at his side. When Ezra spoke, Thrawn’s eyes shunted back to the transmitter and stayed there.

“Yes,” he said softly, not looking up. “Quite frankly, it does.”

Ezra shifted from foot to foot. He could hear the same words — _quite frank-quite-it does-frankly-quite frankly-it does_ — echoed in Thrawn’s head on a loop, overlapping each other as Thrawn stewed on his own response, not happy with how he’d said it or the words he’d used. Eventually, he looked up, hands still working on the transmitter automatically. His gaze fell on the full-grown ysalimiri surrounding the ruins, visible from all sides.

“You know I wouldn’t attack you,” Ezra said. “Right?”

Thrawn opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again without answering. It didn’t matter, Ezra could read the answer in his mind even before Thrawn shrugged. 

“I trust you,” he said. An image swam to the forefront of his mind, and Ezra couldn’t help but see it.

“No, you don’t,” he said, a sour taste in his mouth. “You trust your brother. You’re just trying to brainwash yourself into thinking me and him are the same.”

The look Thrawn gave him was blank, but Ezra could sense a sort of disappointment and irritation swirling through his mind — as if Ezra had done something wrong or, more likely, missed an important piece of data that Thrawn wanted him to pick up. 

“It doesn’t matter what my method is,” he said to Ezra, “so long as it achieves the proper results. Besides, it is necessary for you to read my mind, isn’t it?”

Ezra hesitated, unsure how to answer. “You mean … strategically…?”

“Everything’s strategic,” said Thrawn crisply. He adjusted the transmitter’s casing with deft fingers and slid it back into place with a click. “You must read my mind as an exercise, so we know you are capable of doing so against our enemy when the time comes. But due to the … circumstances of our alliance, you must also be allowed to read my mind even at times when I am not altogether willing. Otherwise, your own doubts and lack of trust will grow until our plan becomes inactionable, anyway.”

Ezra frowned; he could feel the ysalimiri blinking at him from the trees. He stared at Thrawn’s bowed head, trying to figure him out as he worked on the transmitter — sometimes, it felt like his mind-reading skills didn’t help him in this area at all. Thrawn’s mind somehow managed to be an open book and yet utterly unreadable at the exact same time. 

He was still contemplating it when Thrawn looked up and set the transmitter aside. He eyed the traps they’d prepared, all of them leaning against the crumbling southern wall.

“Go set those as we discussed,” he said. His voice was soft. “I need to meditate.”

“Meditate?” Ezra glanced over his shoulder at the traps, gut twisting. He knew where to set them, alright — they’d gone over it in detail more than once, until Thrawn was absolutely sure that Ezra wouldn’t forget any element of the plan. But if Thrawn wanted him to set the traps now, that meant they would be sending the message soon. 

His eyes scanned up, from the traps to the ancient engravings carved into the wall behind them. Those works had been carved with a reverent hand by the beings who’d lived here before he and Thrawn crashed — the beings who had battled the Grysks on the same ground he and Thrawn planned to — who had been slaughtered where they stood, until not a single one of them was left. Their buildings were left to rot; their fields grew over; their artwork faded and crumbled into dust. 

And there were millions of them. Millions who went up against the Grysks and lost. Not just _two._

In Thrawn’s mind, he saw the engravings reflected back at him. The edges of each carving blurred and smoothed; Ezra watched an image knit itself back together out of lines so faded he could barely make them out. He turned to look at Thrawn again, his mouth set into a speculative frown. Thrawn had slipped off the altar and now rested with his back against it on the floor; his head was tipped back, his eyes narrow red slits, his gaze seeing right past Ezra like he wasn’t there.

“Okay, you meditate, then,” Ezra said, knowing Thrawn wouldn’t hear him. “I’ll go set the traps.”

He didn’t even feel a slight ripple of acknowledgement from Thrawn’s mind as he walked away.

* * *

He recognizes them from his studies. They are the same size, with the same dimensions, as the twin statues once mounted behind his aft bridge office desk. Their scales are a dull yellow, their fur flat and brown; the odor, when he leans closer to them is musky; he can smell the dry dusty scent of dead insects, each carapace caught in the ysalimir’s fur to disintegrate beneath the sun.

He examines the one nearest to him. Its talons are sunk deep in the wood, curved directly into the vein of the tree. Not wise to simply pull the ysalimir off, then; he takes Thrass’s _oth’ola endzali_ from around his neck and retraces his step back fifteen meters, where he hangs it on a low branch of a tree. If ysalimiri are truly Force-null, and if this nullifying effect is truly an evolutionary defense, then he would do well to purge himself of all traces of the Force before attempting to remove the ysalimir.

He hesitates before going back. He feels naked without the pendant; his thoughts swirl, too fast for him to follow at first, but only for a moment. He catches up quickly, adapts, learns which strands, ideas, and observations to discard so he can stay focused. It takes him only a moment to regain his innate sense of calm and focus without the _oth’ola endzali_ around his neck.

When he walks back to the ysalimiri, his steps are measured and controlled. He climbs onto the branch next to the lowest ysalimir, perches against the trunk of the tree so he can study it with both hands free. Its talons, on closer inspection, appear to be crusted in a substance similar to petrified wood; yet this substance looks to be nothing more than a thin layer, perhaps not rooting the ysalimir to its branch as firmly as it appears to. Perhaps the ysalimir can slough this layer like a snake sheds its skin; perhaps it can be induced to do so even against its will, without harming it.

He sits up slowly, considers his options. When he was five years old, he encountered a branch of coral growing in the ice caves of Rentor, beneath the iceberg’s surface, where he wasn’t supposed to travel alone. He’d never seen anything like it before; his cousin Kivu’well’aru collected small geologic formations, and she didn’t have anything like this on the shelf in her room. She would like this, he decided; she would probably even pay him for it.

He removed a vibroblade from his pocket — a blade he’d been gifted by his elderly neighbor, a secret thank-you for when Thrawn helped balance the old man’s debts to the Ufsa Aristocra — and approached the coral sideways. Gingerly, he gripped a narrow offshoot of it, placing the vibroblade at the base several centimeters down. It would make a good sample for Vuwella; nicely-shaped, and a decent length.

But the moment his vibroblade sliced through the coral, everything went wrong.

He was slammed backward, his elbow bouncing off the cave floor with a jarring pain that shot all the way up to his teeth. The vibroblade waved dangerously in his hand as he skidded across the ground, but he was able to keep it pointed up and away from him, avoiding any injury. The piece of severed coral in his other hand was chipped, but otherwise not damaged in the attack.

 _You hurt me,_ Thrawn heard someone say. It was a voice in his head, sugared and whispery, unlike anything he’d ever heard from another Chiss. He stood on watery legs, gripping the vibroblade and the piece of coral like lifelines, looking for someone to fight. 

There was no one. There was only the coral; its cells seemed to glow in the dim light that filtered through the ice. Invisible fingers prodded at Thrawn’s brain as he stared at it, poked through the coils of muscle and little grey cells inside of him. He felt them stroking at his thought process with a touch that was light and almost gentle, and then the fingers paused, poised against what felt to Thrawn like a deep, life-giving vein in his left hemisphere. He held his breath, cold fear trickling into his heart. And then the gentleness was gone. The invisible fingers clawed into his neural pathways and tore them viciously apart. 

When his vision came back, he forced himself to his feet and stared at the coral, understanding instinctively that he was a prey animal looking at his predator. There was something wrong with the coral, undeniably, deeply wrong. It couldn’t move, it couldn’t speak — but it was sentient. It could hurt him. 

When he walked away from the ice caves, he opened his mouth to call for help and found that he couldn’t remember Cheunh. 

It took him weeks to re-learn it, Thrawn remembers now with a rueful smile. The blemish on his academic record nearly cost him a spot at the Academy on Naporar. But a few weeks of muteness at the age of five could be hand-waved away fairly simply, especially when his superiors found out which settlement he was from. They often did the math too quickly, assumed his brief period of muteness was a traumatic response to the attack on Rentor which had left Thrawn and Thrass as orphans — but it wasn’t so. His mind, his most precious resource, had been locked away from him, hidden behind complex alien ciphers which it took him weeks to decode. 

He takes another look at the ysalimir’s claws. It’s sessile, just like the coral, but Force-null rather than Force-sensitive. He runs his finger up the ysalimir’s bent leg, moving gently, advancing one centimeter at a time.

When he reaches the ysalimir’s crooked elbow, he spots a twitch — a muscle jumping beneath the loose skin of its flank. He starts again, from the other leg this time, and sees the same twitch once again. His experiment bears fruit four times over, on each of the ysalimir’s legs.

The fifth time, Thrawn doesn’t move slowly. He digs his fingers sharply into the pulsepoint hidden beneath the ysalimir’s elbow joint, invoking the same twitch, but this time in all four legs at once, and harder than before — and before his eyes, the rocky layer of growth over the ysalimir’s claws breaks away.

The talons themselves retract. When he laces his fingers beneath the ysalimir’s ribs and lifts it, it comes away from the branch clean and safe.

Alive.

He turns it around, meets its sleepy eyes with his own, and smiles. 

_Now to find out what you can really do,_ he says.

* * *

The spade is waiting for him when he reaches the _Chimaera’s_ wreck, but today he picks it up and keeps walking, relishing the sting of friction where the wood touches his blistered palm. The creel rests heavily against his shoulder blades, lending credence to his foray this far from camp. When the Jedi wakes and goes searching for him, he will find Thrawn with a freshly-killed animal in his back creel, and he won’t think to question it for weeks.

Deep in the woods, he carries the spade — past the wreck, past the scars left on the forest floor by the purrgils, and past the splintered trees — to the ruins above which the purrgils lost control.

The ysalimiri are thick here. He fans out, working clockwise until he finds a tree with only one ysalimir in it, high up in the foliage. From here, no other ysalimiri are visible; it’s the perfect place for a test. Shrugging off the creel, he hangs it from its strap on a nearby branch and sets to work, carefully upturning the earth a meter or two out from the tree’s roots. 

It’s a great deal like the other traps he’s prepared for when the Grysks — or more likely, their slaves — come looking for him. He leans the spade against the tree when he’s done and reaches into his tunic; it’s the same tunic he wore as a Grand Admiral, the same one he wore during the crash, but it’s unrecognizable now. Shortly after landing here — if you can call it that — Thrawn removed his rank plaque and buried it with his crew. That night, he mended each tear in the fabric and dyed the uniform itself black using a mixture of local root vegetables and ash — not out of mourning, he will tell Bridger if he ever bothers to ask, but because black is more practical than white. Especially out here.

From inside his tunic, he removes a small pouch woven from the rags of an Imperial uniform. He crouches down next to the upturned earth and sprinkles a selection of crushed herbs, dried meat, and berries into the dirt. He covers it carefully, ensuring no avians will swoop down and harvest it before it has the chance to lure the creatures he really hopes to come. 

Standing, he casts a quick glance around him, cementing the location in his mind, and then shields his eyes to judge the position of the sun. He still has three hours before Bridger wakes; grabbing his spade and hooking the back creel around his shoulders, he heads back to the _Chimaera’s_ wreck. 

* * *

The beast’s hoofs are angled downward; he’s noticed as much from its footprints. From that simple observation, it’s an easy matter to locate the patch of flattened grass where it slept last night, and from there to alter the stones and roots — to dig subtle furrows in the ground — until an inexorable path has formed. With the beast’s angled hooves, it will choose the path of least resistance purely by instinct, never knowing that this path has been made inorganically, by Chiss hands, to lure it to the snare.

Bridger would be unsettled, Thrawn thinks, to see how quickly he can catch and kill these beasts. It’s a necessary fiction he’s maintained throughout their stay here; he can’t allow Bridger to know what he really does with his time. Better to let him think it’s spent hunting.

Only Bridger _doesn’t_ think he’s hunting, whispers a voice in his head that sounds horribly similar to Thrass. Bridger thinks he’s returning to the _Chimaera_ , scavenging through the wreck, burying the bodies of his men. 

And that’s too close to the truth for comfort. He isn’t one to deny the evidence in front of him, but he prefers to think the Jedi doesn’t know. Initially, he spent as much time at the _Chimaera_ as possible, refusing to admit to himself that he’d searched in all the places he physically could, that he’d located all discoverable remains. There’s no reason to return there now; his time is better spent tending to the ysalimiri, fixing the technology and weaponry he’s salvaged, and perfecting his plans.

Still, he does return there sometimes. At night, when Bridger is sleeping, and Thrawn can’t force himself to rest. He picks across the forest floor silently, brings the creel with him to convince himself he has a purpose. But each time, he only lays the creel against the base of a tree and stands there, watching the wreckage of his flagship gleam beneath the moon. When he can’t stay awake anymore, he lies on his back in the cold earth upturned by his spade and sleeps amongst the buried bodies of his men. 

Bridger has caught him once or twice — not at the gravesite, but in the river in the morning, when Thrawn returns late or Bridger wakes up early. He’s seen Thrawn in the water, washing the earth from his skin. If he’s put the pieces together — Thrawn hopes he hasn’t, hopes it with an urgency and sincerity that’s unnatural for him — he hasn’t said anything. 

Thrawn loads the hoofed beast’s carcass into the back creel, then settles on a low branch on the tree. He can see the infrared signature of moles beneath the broken ground; Bridger won’t be able to see a thing. If he can sense their presence and catch one nevertheless, it will show that the rumors surrounding ysalimiri are just that — rumors.

But if Bridger fails … if the ysalimiri truly can block the Force…

Thrawn settles back against the tree and waits for Bridger to find him.

* * *

Ezra came out of the memories with a shake of the head, taking a moment to remember where he was. Thrawn sat at the fireside not far away, his head bowed over a communicator he was working to repair.

"The _Chimaera_ again," Ezra muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. Over the past two weeks, he'd come to learn that there was nothing he hated more than Thrawn's memories of the _Chimaera._ He could take just about anything else — any battle, no matter how traumatic, was better than the still-too-fresh wreck. He glanced down at the fresh leather cords in his hands and remembered belatedly how his old laces had snapped earlier that day. With another, more brisk shake of the head, Ezra bent over, looping the cords through the empty eyelets of his boots. He was still leaning over when he felt something change in the air — a tight discomfort in his chest — a shortness of breath — a spike in his heart rate. He frowned, trying to figure out what had changed, and then realized the sensations weren’t coming from him at all.

Glancing up, he studied Thrawn’s face and found it stoic and unreadable.

“You okay?” said Ezra uncertainly. 

Thrawn’s eyes shifted his way. “Yes,” he said. Then, when Ezra only gave him a doubtful look, he added, “Why?”

Ezra stood up slowly and pressed a hand against his chest, trying to massage the discomfort away. “You don’t feel a little breathless?” he asked.

Thrawn’s head snapped up and Ezra felt an immediate sharpening of his senses as he shifted into combat mode, scanning the surrounding area for signs of nerve gas.

“No, no,” said Ezra, waving his hands. “ _I’m_ not feeling breathless. We’re not under attack or anything. I’m saying that I can tell _you’re_ out of breath — you know — through the Force.”

Thrawn’s adrenaline spiked and faded. He turned his head slightly and narrowed his eyes at Ezra, who fancied he could now see the shallow ups and downs of Thrawn’s chest.

“There’s a tight feeling right here,” Ezra explained, indicating his own heart. “And your heartbeat is going faster than normal. That’s why I asked.”

“You can sense all that?” said Thrawn, now sounding a little breathless as well, even as curiosity took over his face. He inhaled deeply — well, deeper than he had a moment before — and looked away. “You’re improving quickly.”

“Yeah, way to avoid the subject,” said Ezra. “So smooth I almost didn’t notice.”

Thrawn turned away with a slight shake of his head, the curiosity replaced by his usual unreadable expression. When Ezra spoke again, he made an effort to control the tone of his voice.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

For a moment, he thought Thrawn wouldn’t answer. Then, slowly, Thrawn lifted a hand and pressed it against his ribs.

“It’s the purrgil,” he said a little stiffly, not meeting Ezra’s eyes. “It bruised my ribs before the crash. Sometimes it affects my breathing. Not often.”

There was a long silence. Ezra opened himself up a little more to the Force and felt the shallow expansions of Thrawn’s lungs, the rigid feeling of constriction in his chest — and not _just_ in his chest. In his throat, too, which was so tight that Thrawn had to force out every word.

“That’s not your ribs, Thrawn,” said Ezra. He felt realization and a sense of embarrassment settling over him all at once. “Your ribs are fine. If you were injured, I’d be able to tell.”

Thrawn said nothing. He kept his eyes fixed on the communicator he was fiddling with, digging his thumbnail under the casing and popping it out of place.

“You haven’t noticed that it always seems to happen when you’re thinking about the _Chimaera_?” Ezra asked.

He felt Thrawn’s thoughts fracture, becoming impossible to read. At the same time, Ezra’s grasp on physical sensation only got stronger; he felt Thrawn’s breath catch in his throat, felt the cold pit of fire aching beneath his ribs.

“Come on, dude,” said Ezra softly, approaching Thrawn with his hand outstretched. He could feel Thrawn’s instincts telling him to back away, just as he could feel Thrawn fighting to suppress them, allowing Ezra to rest his hand on his arm. The whole struggle happened without the slightest flicker of expression from Thrawn. 

“Breathe,” Eza told him. He reached out to the Force again, dipping himself as fast as he could into a meditative state. With a link open between his mind and Thrawn’s, he did his best to project a feeling of peace and serenity down the line. He let it leak into Thrawn’s tense throat muscles, into his chest and lungs, into his ribs.

Gradually, Thrawn’s lungs stuttered and then expanded, finally taking a full breath of air. He moved away from Ezra a moment later and continued work on his communicator without so much as glancing up.

“Well, you’re welcome,” Ezra huffed. “No need to thank me. I only performed instant therapy and cured you completely, that’s all.”

“Leave me alone,” said Thrawn quietly but firmly, with the full weight of command in his voice. “Put the ysalimir back and go.”

Ezra eyed him, a million unwise questions and responses popping into his head. After a moment, he trudged over to the ysalimir and picked it up, then jogged back with it, a sense of guilt making each step more rushed than the last. When he’d settled the biosupport rack on the ground near Thrawn — and lost their mental connection completely as a result — he hesitated and said, 

“You really don’t trust me, do you?”

“Go,” said Thrawn calmly, not looking up.

Without the Force, Ezra couldn’t read him at all.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra helps Thrawn. With permission, this time.

“Your training with the ysalimir is no reason to neglect training in other areas,” said Thrawn firmly, with a note of finality in his voice that signaled the argument was over. “Your mind-reading skills will be a vital weapon when the time comes. If you are _incapable_ of reading minds, what will it matter if you _are_ capable of using the Force?”

Scowling, Ezra declined to answer. He was already storming away, taking the baby ysalimir and its rack farther down the bank. About fifteen meters from Thrawn, he stopped and propped the rack against a tree, then took his time coming back.

“Any other requests?” he said sourly.

Thrawn looked at him, one unimpressed eyebrow raised. “No. That’s all.”

Ezra gestured violently toward Thrawn. “Then let’s get to it.”

He was already exhausted from the last five hours spent in close communion with the ysalimir, doing his best to ease into a bond naturally — and to do it as fast as he could. He’d tried floating light objects with the Force while simultaneously chatting to the ysalimir, but so far, he’d had no luck — even when he just tried to levitate leaves. 

“Not here,” Thrawn said just as Ezra started to collapse against the bank. He gestured northward, to the forest. “I would like your assistance today. With the wreckage.”

Ezra straightened up slowly, careful not to show what he was thinking. He’d heard the hesitation in Thrawn’s voice — and he shared his anxieties, tenfold. But he only nodded, quiet and subdued, and turned to follow Thrawn through the trees. 

“You need my help?” he asked tentatively.

“There are sections of the _Chimaera_ I can’t access on my own,” Thrawn said. He pursed his lips, then seemed to force himself to say, “We wrecked it together. It follows we can only comb through the wreckage together as well.”

Ezra understood that perhaps too well. He followed Thrawn silently, gut roiling, cheeks flushed.

“You want me to practice while we walk?” he asked.

Thrawn nodded, not even glancing Ezra’s way. With a sigh, Ezra reached out to the Force, letting it cool his blood and calm his mind before he connected to Thrawn’s. It was always difficult to do this while walking, especially over an uneven forest floor, and it took him a long minute of struggling before he could access Thrawn’s mind and simultaneously step over fallen logs and twisted roots.

He beckoned Thrawn’s mind toward him; at the same time, he launched his own consciousness forward, chasing Thrawn’s thoughts down. The connection was smooth, fast, natural — nothing at all like the connections he’d been trying to make with the ysalimir.

And within moments, he was back in the familiar and uncomfortable realm of Thrawn’s memories.

* * *

 _Another Ugnaught death on the premises?_ Thrawn says. His tone makes it clear this is not something Governor Pryce can deny, which he knows would typically be her first strategic move. His tone combined with the hard expression on his face informs her — if she’s observant enough to notice it, and he knows she is — that he does not approve, that he will not accept excuses. There is no legitimate reason another Ugnaught should have died on the premises of the TIE Defender factory in Lothal.

And yet, miraculously, Governor Pryce only gives him a superior smile, as if she hasn’t noticed his tone or expression at all. Thrawn waits for her to explain; she does not. 

_The report states this Ugnaught was employed by the Empire to repair heating coils,_ he says when she remains silent. _An examination of the factory’s files shows that no consistent record has been kept regarding labor; employee names are on file. Hours worked are not. Is this so?_

The smile remains. Governor Pryce inclines her head just slightly, angles her shoulders closer to him. It is a gesture perhaps meant to be friendly or conspiratorial, but a faint line appears at the edge of her lip, running up to the side of her nose, and this gives away the contempt she feels. 

_Grand Admiral, you must understand,_ she says smoothly. _These are backwoods people; some of them can barely sign their own names, let alone fill out a timesheet. Many of them have never even bothered to learn Lothal’s calendar, let alone our clock. Our supervisors do the best they can._

 _If that were true, then they would keep a record of hours worked by each employee,_ Thrawn says. Governor Pryce leans away and affects an airy laugh.

 _You never struck me as the bureaucratic type,_ she says. _You’d think someone with four courts-martial under his belt—_

 _The evidence suggests this Ugnaught fell asleep on the job,_ says Thrawn, voice sharp. Governor Pryce’s facial heat rises; she meets his eyes and refuses to look away, trying to intimidate him or perhaps rebuke him for his tone. _It does us no good to exhaust our employees; it isn’t necessary, it compromises the quality of their work, and ultimately it leads to injury and death._

He can feel his mind churning, can feel unwise words coalescing on his tongue. Ar’alani’s face crops up in his memory, accompanied by Thrass, both advising him sternly to keep his mouth shut. This happens in a fraction of a second; he has just enough time to note it, and then he’s saying it anyway:

 _I understand your value for sentient life is lower than average,_ he says, recalling Batonn with a surge of bitterness. _Yet surely you must value these workers as Imperial resources, if nothing else. You are wasting Imperial resources, Governor Pryce, and you are wasting lives._

Her eyes are cool. Her facial muscles are relaxed, as if she’s perhaps hiding amusement from him.

 _Ugnaught lives,_ she says softly, dismissively. She shrugs one shoulder; her lips curl up in a slight smile. She’s challenging him; her eyes shift down to the column of his throat and then to his hands. 

Thrawn does not miss the pointed way she looks at her own hands afterward — her fair-skinned human hands — nor does he argue with her over the relative value of human and alien lives. He pulls up a report on his datapad instead, keeping his face blank. He keys the holodisplay and sits back as the report pops up between them. Pryce’s eyes widen, then narrow, when she realizes what it is.

 _You’re reporting the death to High Command?_ she asks, half-scoffing and half-laughing.

 _I am required to,_ says Thrawn mildly, _by Imperial regulation._

He watches as she reads the report more thoroughly. The color drains from her face, then heightens in two bright spots of rage above her cheeks. When she finishes reading, Thrawn cancels the display, not giving her the chance to return to the more complex aspects of the report for a closer look. He can tell she wants to; it’s in her nature to tear every sentence of the report apart, to reread and digest it properly so she can formulate a defense.

 _High Command was not pleased with the outcome at Batonn,_ he says. _But the lives at Batonn were not considered Imperial resources. The Ugnaught workers, on the other hand—_

She interrupts him with a sharp-edged laugh. Deftly, she reaches forward and grabs his wrist, switching his comlink off. Thrawn sits still, watching her as she systematically goes through his devices, powering down anything that might have a connection to the HoloNet and anything issued by the Imperial Navy or ISB.

 _You really think the Empire cares about a handful of Ugnaughts?_ she asks when she’s done. _You really think they care about you? If you report me for this — and I encourage you to do so — you’ll only be shooting yourself in your foot. Every Imperial base has alien workers. Every Imperial base has alien deaths. You call attention to something as trivial as this and you’ll only label yourself even further as an outsider._

She meets his eyes, but with a distant cast that indicates she is _studying_ his eyes, not looking into them. It’s the way some people look at an interesting specimen vs. a fellow sentient being. The back of Thrawn’s neck tingles unpleasantly, but he keeps any sign of discomfort or surprise off his face. 

_You’ve heard of the Empire’s biocontainment zones_? Pryce asks. _Or the transitory facilities, perhaps?_

Reluctantly, he inclines his head.

 _There’s not a single human prisoner there,_ Pryce tells him. Then, leaning forward confidentially, she smiles and says, _And out of all the prisoners there, I’d wager only ten percent pose a genuine biological threat. Do you know what the rest of them have done to deserve containment?_

Thrawn meets her eyes with contempt. _They exist,_ he says, keeping his voice crisp and neutral. _Perhaps they’ve irritated someone high-ranking enough to put them there._ Then, using their word for people like him, _They’re aliens._

 _Exactly,_ Pryce says. Sitting back, all satisfaction and glee, she says, _Take care you don’t end up there yourself._

* * *

They reached the _Chimaera_ , and that was when Ezra’s connection to Thrawn snapped. He shuffled forward on numb legs; his cheeks felt heavy, incapable of forming any expression, whether good or bad. He followed Thrawn obediently to the collapsed port side of the Star Destroyer.

“Open it,” Thrawn told him. Then, as an afterthought, “If you can.”

Ezra could. The durasteel unbent beneath his will; what was once a rippling, melted, and impenetrable wall became a door. Thrawn didn’t pause to admire it; he stepped inside as soon as the hole was big enough to allow him, leaving Ezra to follow. 

He hesitated, thinking of what he might find inside.

He followed.

* * *

 _You smell distressed,_ Rukh says.

Thrawn turns to him, a faint smile playing over his lips.

 _When did you begin to smell emotions?_ he asks.

Rukh doesn’t answer. Perhaps he considers it a stupid question, Thrawn notes with good-natured chagrin. Perhaps all Noghri can smell emotions, and it is not a learned skill. Rukh moves forward, and without questioning it Thrawn extends his hand, knowing what comes next. He holds still as his bodyguard — the only other non-human aboard the _Chimaera_ — presses his nose to Thrawn’s wrist.

 _What bothers you?_ Rukh asks.

His voice, gravelly and low, reminds Thrawn of the sometimes-sibilant, sometimes-reptilian tones he’s heard from other Chiss. It’s categorically different — not comparable at all, really — yet it reminds him of home, all the same. There are no humans who sound like Noghri, after all, and there are likewise no humans who sound entirely like Chiss.

 _I find it likely the Grysks have infiltrated Imperial space,_ he tells Rukh. _I haven’t told Karyn yet. I suspect she will figure it out herself long before I have the chance._

He feels the Noghri’s nostrils dilating against his skin. His pulsepoint throbs beneath the warm press of Rukh’s lips.

 _But what_ bothers _you?_ Rukh asks. 

Thrawn thinks of Governor Pryce, of her actions at Batonn and her thinly-veiled threat against him. Really, he cannot consider it _veiled_ at all. He pulls his wrist away and looks at Rukh thoughtfully.

 _Walk with me,_ he says.

They leave Thrawn’s aft bridge office, entering a corridor filled with officers and technicians. The occasional stormtrooper turns his helmet to glare at Rukh as he passes by. They stroll away from the bridge, deeper into the _Chimaera’s_ passageways — and Rukh never questions where they’re going. Loyal, Thrawn thinks. Loyal perhaps to a fault; loyal perhaps without justification. 

They round a corner. Down the hall, Thrawn’s sharp ears pick out the sound of a lieutenant — Lieutenant Weylen, trained as a weapons officer, currently serving beneath Senior Lieutenant Pyrondi — saying, _Well, what do you think it is?_

Thrawn is silent; beside him, Rukh is listening, as well.

 _It’s a Noghri,_ says Lieutenant Cedaw; his lips form the wrong shape around the ‘o.’ He pronounces the word wrong by mistake. _Well, that’s what I’ve heard, at least,_ he says.

Thrawn stops. He looks at Rukh; Rukh looks at him. His knobby forehead is drawn into a subtle frown. 

_Well, whatever it is,_ says Weylen, _it creeps me out._

 _It’s friends with the admiral,_ says Cedaw. He places particular emphasis on ‘admiral.’ The _blue-skinned_ admiral, he seems to be saying; the _Chiss_ admiral; the alien. _What do you expect?_

Silently, Rukh tugs at Thrawn’s sleeve. For a moment, Thrawn stands firm, unmoving, refusing to be budged. Then, matching Rukh’s silence entirely, he allows himself to be led away.

* * *

The stains on the floor were unmistakable: Thrawn had been here before, had already cleared the bodies away and buried them where Ezra wouldn’t see. But he hadn’t cleaned up the blood; he hadn’t scrubbed the evidence of human rot and decay off the floor. Ezra walked carefully, but Thrawn walked with the confidence and knowledge of someone who had tread this twisted corridor a dozen times before. 

They came to another impasse; the bulkheads had bent and melted together, leaving an impenetrable mass where once there had been only an open hallway. Ezra concentrated, his hands outstretched before him, and felt the particles inside the durasteel begin to vibrate. Gradually, the walls tore themselves apart, twisting away from the center of the hallway until there was enough room for both of them to pass.

The odor of rotten flesh hit them immediately. Ezra breathed it in before he even realized what it was; his throat flexed, then constricted, and he found himself gagging into his hand violently, wretchedly. Ahead of him, Thrawn remained upright and unmoved. He scanned the bodies on the floor; what little Ezra could see of his face was unreadable. 

“When you’re ready,” he said, his voice strange; he waited for Ezra to join him.

* * *

He returns to the camp weary but unburdened; his limbs are heavy and his thoughts are far away. Absently — automatically — he counts the seconds it takes for Ezra Bridger to notice his return. The Jedi’s head snaps up a full minute after Thrawn enters the perimeter; his dark brows are pulled low over his eyes, and he scans Thrawn’s face first, then moves to the empty creel on Thrawn’s back.

His lips tug upward in sour amusement.

 _No luck?_ he says.

Thrawn slips the packbasket off his shoulders and sets it aside. The Jedi was asleep when he left; the back creel serves only as an excuse, disguising Thrawn’s true purpose in the woods. He sits beside the fire, sweat running cold beneath his heavy winter clothes, and wraps his arms around his aching ribs.

 _No luck,_ he says neutrally. _And you?_

There’s venom in Ezra’s eyes. He doesn’t like being reminded of his own uselessness. He obfuscates with a cynical sense of humor, holding his arms out to encompass the entire camp and curling his lip.

 _Oh, everything’s going great,_ he says. He uses the same tone some of Thrawn’s superiors have used in the past, a sarcastic tone meant to humiliate insubordinates. He suspects the Jedi has not had enough life experience to recognize how ugly his own voice can be. _I’m having the time of my life here,_ Ezra says. _What about you? I notice you didn’t bring back the gourmet takeout I asked for. Couldn’t find any in the woods?_

Thrawn says nothing. Ezra averts his eyes, shakes his head with a click of the tongue.

 _I expected better from you, Grand Admiral,_ he says. He doesn’t seem to hear how brittle his voice has become. He doesn’t seem to notice how close to tears he is.

Carefully toneless, Thrawn says, _I’m sorry to disappoint._

The Jedi blinks, squinching his eyelids shut as if an overabundance of pressure will erase the moisture in his eyes. Then he blinks rapidly, the way most humans do when they’re distressed. In a moment, the loud emotion is almost entirely, washed away by apathy.

 _What’s the matter?_ Ezra asks, his voice low again. Unnaturally so. _Couldn’t find anything to kill?_

The fire is guttering. Thrawn says nothing; he pokes at the blackened logs until they collapse, then piles fresh, dried wood atop the embers. _I found some fowl,_ he says. He resents the Jedi for prompting him to say as much aloud; the fowl are tethered to his belt, fully visible, and a conversation about them shouldn’t be required. He finds himself reminded of his childhood, when it seemed like everyone around him — Thrass included — spoke ceaselessly, explaining concepts and motivations and interactions that never needed to be explained because they could easily be observed, saying pointless things for the sole purpose of eradicating a silence that Thrawn saw as peaceful and safe. 

_Awful small, aren’t they?_ Ezra notes.

This isn’t necessary, either. Thrawn knows far better than Ezra that these fowl are small for their species. In fact, they are barely out of adolescence, and not well fed. He knows because he has been hunting since the day they were stranded here; Ezra has not.

 _Their size indicates youth,_ he says patiently. _Their youth indicates inexperience. They are easier to trap than older members of the same species; their wings are smaller, but their necks are long, so they walk into artificial furrows without realizing the danger._

He can see that Ezra isn’t listening. He continues anyway, almost compulsively. There is a fundamental difference between his speech and Ezra’s, he feels — his words are necessary because Ezra truly doesn’t understand how the traps work or why Thrawn has returned to camp with small fowl. But his words are equally useless, of course, because Ezra’s eyes are glazed; he’s only waiting for Thrawn to be silent so he can speak again. 

_It is more efficient,_ Thrawn continues anyway, hyper-aware that every word is next to pointless, _to capture several small fowl in one hour than to capture one large fowl in two._

He picks up a long, narrow twig from the ground and stands, crossing to Ezra’s side of the fire. He sits beside Ezra, on the same rotten log, without asking, and pretends not to notice when the Jedi shifts uncomfortably and moves several centimeters to the side. Thrawn straddles the log rather than sit on it correctly and twists away from the fire; he uses the stick to draw a graph in the unmelted snow behind him.

 _The trap looks like this,_ he says, tracing it out. _One deep furrow, three-quarters of a meter tall, dug into solid ground rather than snow. The adult fowl are experienced enough to recognize that if they walk into the furrow, they will be trapped, unable to spread their wings. But the younger fowl walk into it gladly; they’re able to see above the furrow due to their long necks, so they think they can walk through unharmed and fly away whenever necessary. The furrow, however, is too narrow for them to spread their wings._

He studies Ezra’s face. He sees a deliberate lack of understanding there; the Jedi hasn’t listened to a single word he said — and he’s done it on purpose, out of spite.

 _Too bad your creepy little friend isn’t here,_ Ezra says.

Thrawn doesn’t know who he means. Eli? Not creepy, even by human standards. The same goes for Karyn. Pryce? Certainly possible. Yularen? Perhaps, but he’s not sure Ezra is familiar with the ISB. He twists back around on the log and throws his twig into the fire. 

_Or at least his invisibility device,_ Ezra continues. _Force knows we could use that here. Maybe then you’d actually catch something worth eating._

The logs pop and creak; flames dance above them, lending a sympathetic flush to Ezra’s cheeks. Thrawn sits very still. Now, of course, he knows who Ezra is talking about. Who Ezra is _joking_ about, only three weeks after the fact.

The fire sears into his eyes, making them burn and itch from sensitivity to the light. He remembers the deck of the _Chimaera_ beneath his feet, his thumb pressed so tightly against his comlink’s call button that a callus formed hours later — when the battle was lost and his ship was stranded and he no longer cared. He remembers trying to keep his voice even and unaffected on the bridge as he asked Rukh for his status — once, twice — and the mocking voice of Garazeb Orellios telling him to call back — and the unmistakable sound of electricity sizzling through Rukh’s flesh, and the agonized howl of impending death, and Orellios’s voice again, gloating, his smirk audible even over the com: _Yeah, never mind about calling back._

Thrawn moves away from Ezra, just slightly. He tastes bitter, stagnant saliva in his mouth and realizes he hasn’t swallowed in over a minute — and then comes the subsequent realization that he hasn’t breathed either, that his chest is lying perfectly still beneath his clothes. He inhales carefully, slowly, painfully, giving nothing away. It feels as though he has crushed glass in his chest, each sliver cutting deeper into his lungs every time he breathes.

When he speaks, he doesn’t show his thoughts at all.

_I can show you how to build the trap if you wish. Perhaps you will catch larger fowl._

The Jedi, perhaps not realizing what he’s said or what he’s awakened, perhaps not understanding how weak he still is and how easily Thrawn could strike, only scoffs. 

* * *

Ezra stood down the corridor, his arms loaded with salvaged technology, his face turned toward the empty hall behind him. He breathed through his mouth, using the Force to numb his tongue and keep the taste of death from landing there. The air inside the _Chimaera_ was hot, stale, tainted by what had happened here. He tried not to think about it or even sense it.

And behind him, working silently and with no expression on his face, Thrawn moved yet another body to a makeshift stretcher. The off-white canvas he’d used to carry the dead was already stained dark by wet, blackened flesh.

He carried it out by himself, guiding the stretcher while the faulty thrusters he’d attached beneath it sputtered and strained. Ezra turned away as the body went by; he aided Thrawn as much as he could without being noticed, using the Force to subtly lighten the load.

“Is that the last one?” he asked.

Thrawn didn’t answer. Behind him, the stench of decay lingered in the hallway. When Ezra glanced back, he saw more corpses waiting in the distance, each of them rotting off of their bones and into the durasteel floor.

When Thrawn came back in, the stretcher empty and his hair damp with sweat, he only glanced at Ezra with haunted eyes and said, “Go on.”

* * *

When the holo flickers to life — glitching slightly, like so many long-distance signals do this side of the galaxy — he notes the brief widening of Ar’alani’s eyes. A line appears between her eyebrows, faint but noticeable.

 _Thrawn,_ she says.

There is something more than a simple greeting in her voice. Perhaps disbelief; perhaps concern. It sounds almost like she wants to say his name not as a greeting but as a question.

 _Admiral Ar’alani,_ says Thrawn. 

Her eyes flicker first to his hair — much shorter now than the last time she saw him — and then to his uniform. Her lip curls.

 _That’s new,_ she says, eyeing his Imperial rank insignia with perhaps distaste, perhaps alarm. 

He wants to say ‘You haven’t changed.’ It’s a waste of words, so he doesn’t, but the sentiment lodges in his throat, dominating his thoughts. She truly is no different from the last time he saw her; she has no new scars; her hair is neither longer nor shorter than before his exile; the lines on her face are no deeper than they were before.

And why _should_ she have changed? 

_How long has it been?_ Thrawn asks. His tone is even, his voice a little scratchy. From the slight twitch of Ar’alani’s eyebrow, he can tell she notices the roughness but apparently decides not to comment. _I have attempted to align the Imperial calendar with the Ascendancy’s,_ he explains. He doesn’t need to tell her how poorly those attempts went; she knows him well enough that the question itself likely gives her all the information she needs to know.

 _Two years and sixty-seven standard days,_ Ar’alani says after checking her console display. _How far off were you?_

 _Roughly three months,_ says Thrawn, but he says it automatically, his mind already far away. Two years, she says. It’s been only two years since he left. He looks at the small image of himself on his holodeck’s screen, a reflection of what Ar’alani sees. He remembers the line between her eyebrows and the brief widening of her eyes when he came onscreen. 

He hasn’t changed much, he tells himself. Not really. 

* * *

It was almost dark when they left the _Chimaera_ at last — and on a planet like this, with days thirty-three hours long, that said a lot. For an hour, Ezra watched, drifting in and out of Thrawn’s consciousness while the other man buried the bodies alone. He retreated to the ruins for thirty minutes of blissful, ysalimiri-driven ignorance, depositing their salvaged technology with the rest of it. Aimlessly, he organized the scraps, the canisters, the chips and wires and motherboards. 

When he couldn’t delay it any further, he went back. The Force came back to him gradually, stroking his senses back to life as he walked away from the ruins and closer to Thrawn. His shoulders hunched and his head was bowed by the time he reached the _Chimaera’s_ wreck, but he was walking with a spring in his step as well, unable to fight the lightening effect of the Force on him. 

He found Thrawn waiting for him. He sat on the ground, his back against a tree, the shovel still clasped loosely in his hands. His eyes were set on the treeline; he didn’t turn his head until Ezra was standing directly over him.

In the darkness several meters away, Ezra could sense several dead bodies lined up neatly in a row. Unburied.

“You’re not done,” said Ezra uncertainly. 

Thrawn shook his head.

A few meters away, there was a series of shallow graves, each of them no more than a third of a meter deep. The corpses were farther away, nothing more than silhouettes in the dark, but Ezra could tell how diminished they were. For most of them, one-third of a meter would be sufficient. He glanced at Thrawn again, but Thrawn didn’t meet his eyes. He bowed his head, rested his forehead against his dirt-stained knuckles.

“I could help,” Ezra offered, voice low.

He watched Thrawn’s fingers tighten on the shovel. His nod was so minute that Ezra nearly missed it. He turned, keeping his eyes on the graves and not on the bodies, and with one hand raised, he used the Force to scoop the dirt out of each one, digging them deeper and deeper. With that first step done, he took the spade from Thrawn and wandered out among the graves, ready to finish the work.

He felt Thrawn’s eyes on his back the whole time. 

* * *

It’s his first major kill here on this deserted planet — a large creature weighing at least as much as he does, roughly the size of the dugar-dugars he noted on the distant plains of Batuu when Lord Vader was busy landing their shuttle. Thinking about that — about how recently he’s been on a real mission and how far away it now seems — makes his throat tighten, but it isn’t something he can afford to reflect on right now.

He hauls the dugar-type creature up over his shoulder, its hooves falling heavily against his back, and sets off for the makeshift winter shelter near the _Chimaera’s_ wreck. Walking back through the snow is more difficult with the creature on his back — especially so with bruises and cuts still lining his body from the crash — but it is not unmanageable.

And besides, it’s necessary.

Near the _Chimaera_ — where the ground is already contaminated by the rotting purrgil, not to mention the bodies he’s extracted from the wreck — he hefts the creature off his shoulder and lays it on the ground. Over the next two days, he tends to it when he has time, between finishing their shelter, tending to the unconscious Jedi, searching the debris. The hours blend together through lack of sleep and the pounding white noise that never seems to leave his ears.

Through it all, unceasing, he hears the hull breach alarms.

Night falls on the second day before he finishes the hide, with temperatures dropping quickly. He can hear a freshly-hardened scrim of ice cracking over the _Chimaera’s_ durasteel plates as he holds the hide material to his nose, testing how badly it reeks of gore. It’s passable, he decides. More than anything, it smells like leather and smoke. Everything near the _Chimaera_ smells like smoke. 

He folds the hide over his arms, trudging back to the low shelter he built deeper in the trees. With snow packed against each wall, it provides some measure of warmth throughout the night, but cannot truly be called comfortable. Inside, he lays the hide over the dirt floor and lights the wick of a small disc made of tightly-packed tree sap and microcrystalline wax. 

It illuminates the shelter to a small degree, throwing shadows over the face of Ezra Bridger, who lies asleep nearby, atop a loose pile of needle-type foliage Thrawn was able to pull together from nearby trees after the wreck. Moving silently, Thrawn approaches the Jedi; there are traces of unusually high temperature visible across his cheeks, indicative of a continued fever. But when he rests his palm against Bridger’s forehead, he finds the boy’s skin dry and cool. 

And then, abruptly, Bridger’s eyes snap open and he flinches away. Thrawn removes his hand, doing it slowly to avoid causing any alarm, and in response Bridger looks at him with a curled lip and wide eyes, indicating perhaps contempt and perhaps trepidation.

 _What are you doing?_ Bridger says.

For a moment, Thrawn contemplates not answering. The Jedi _knows_ what he’s doing, or at least could figure it out if he paused to think. But he also hears the hoarseness of Bridger’s voice and understands he hasn’t been out of his fever-induced coma for very long; perhaps there is some lingering confusion at hand.

And in any case, he can practically hear Vanto’s voice inside his head telling him for the hundredth time, _It’s not polite to ignore people just because you think their question was stupid._ When Vanto said this, it was in reference primarily to senators and high-ranking military officers, but perhaps it applies to Jedi as well.

 _I was checking your temperature,_ Thrawn says. _You have been unconscious and feverish for three days._

Weakly, Bridger shifts away from Thrawn. The needles beneath him stick to his hands, and he pauses with his back against the wall, staring down at his palms in confusion.

 _The temperature of your skin indicates a reduced fever,_ Thrawn notes. _Yet your internal body temperature appears elevated._

Bridger only stares at him, not comprehending. Perhaps these statements are too subtle for someone recovering from a concussion to understand; having suffered from concussions himself before, Thrawn attempts to clarify the issue.

 _Are you regulating your internal body temperature?_ Thrawn asks. 

_Regulating … what?_ says Bridger. 

For a long moment, Thrawn says nothing, chewing the inside of his cheek. He gestures to his eyes. _I can see somewhat into the infrared,_ he explains. _Your internal body temperature is high, indicating a fever, but your skin is cool. This implies to me that you are somehow regulating your temperature so as to provide warmth, without tipping the scales, so to speak, into uncomfortable levels of heat. What is your method for temperature regulation? Is this a deliberate action on your part, or an automatic response to fever?_

Bridger only blinks at him.

 _Is it a commonplace evolutionary trait for humans?_ Thrawn asks. _Or is it specific to Force-sensitives, such as yourself?_

He pauses again, but again Bridger does not answer.

 _Do you consciously manipulate your body temperature?_ Thrawn tries once more; he doesn’t allow his impatience to show. _In response to the cold, perhaps? I have read of midi-chlorians, an agent of the Force supposedly present in the blood of Force-sensitives. Perhaps you are capable of inducing kinetic energy through these molecules to produce heat? In any case, it seems your fever is now artificial, warming you internally but not externally, as if to protect you from the cold._

Silently, Bridger scoots away from Thrawn, pulling his knees up to his chest. He moves gingerly, as if his body aches; it likely does. 

_You talk too much,_ Bridger says. 

Thrawn stares at him a moment longer, waiting to respond just in case Bridger is assembling his thoughts for a proper answer. Past experience tells him these _specific_ words may be the precursor to an attack. But no answer comes — and no attack, either — and eventually Thrawn stands and moves away. He collects the hide from the floor and holds it out to Bridger without a word.

Bridger raises his head slightly, squinting at the hide. Gradually, his eyes shift to look directly at Thrawn instead.

Neither of them speaks. When Bridger refuses to take his blanket, Thrawn drops it on the bed of needles in carefully-concealed disgust. He’s glad now that Bridger isn’t speaking; if he required any sort of response, Thrawn isn’t sure he could disguise his emotions properly. Not vocally. It is difficult enough to keep them from showing on his face.

He crosses to the other side of the cramped shelter and sits there with his back against the wall. He pulls a holoprojector from his tunic, running his thumb over a dent in the shell, and busies himself for the next several minutes trying to repair it. He deliberately refuses to look at Bridger, but he notices it in his peripheral vision when Bridger eventually shifts position, moving back to the bed of needles — and the animal hide — and lying down.

Exhaustion takes the young Jedi a moment later. He lies with the hide pulled up to his chin, already asleep again despite doing nothing _but_ sleep for the past three days. Thrawn’s hands go still on the holoprojector, dark lines converging on his face. He feels an ugly, unacceptable expression tugging at his lips and tries to conceal it.

He feels for the projector’s power button, his eyes on Bridger, and thumbs it on. The display sizzles and flickers, the first datafile too corrupted to view. Thrawn switches it off again and sets it aside. Distantly, he hears the _Chimaera’s_ hull breach klaxons screaming through the night.

He could kill the Jedi so easily. 

He takes a slow breath, inhaling through his nose, letting the oxygen rest in his lungs for a full minute before exhaling again. Bridger is injured; he can barely maintain consciousness for more than five minutes; he’s confused, concussed. Useless. Incompetent. The forest to the north of them is filled with ysalimiri; even if the Jedi were fully functional, Thrawn could dispatch him easily with those weapons on his side. 

And he wouldn’t even have to do it with his hands, though to do so might bring him more satisfaction than he cares to address. He’s found three vibroblades in the _Chimaera’s_ wreckage — one functional, two easily repaired. He’s found blasters, as well, some in a state of disassembly — power cells missing or destroyed, casing damaged, barrels warped — but most still salvageable. These weapons, every single one of them, now sit in the ruins to the north, waiting to be used.

He could use them now, if he wanted to.

He _does_ want to.

He can’t. 

Lowering his head against his knees, Thrawn sets the holoprojector down and covers his ears, then presses his palms against them the same way he would to get rid of water after a cold swim. He can still hear the _Chimaera’s_ hull breach alarms in the distance, the sound distorted and warbling, like the wail of a wounded beast. Like the noise that creature made before he killed and skinned it to give the Jedi a warm hide.

He rests a hand over his eyes, blocking the rest of the shelter from sight, and exhales a long, slow sigh.

Forty-six thousand, six hundred fifty-three humans died aboard the _Chimaera_ — enlisted men and officers, stormtroopers and technicians, civilian contractors and medical techs — all of them _his_ responsibility. His crew. Dead on impact, Bridger says — and for the first two days here, Thrawn has chosen to believe him. _Forced_ himself to believe him.

That was before he discovered the ysalimiri. Before he realized the Jedi couldn’t have sensed living crewmembers trapped inside the _Chimaera_ even if he tried. How many people out of 46,653 died from exposure or succumbed to potentially nonfatal wounds in those two days, waiting to be rescued while Thrawn wasted time and effort to bury the disparate body parts of pilots and technicians killed in the hangar bay?

The total number of casualties is only slightly less than the people who died aboard _Outbound Flight_ . In that case, it was an invisible hand around his throat, crushing his windpipe, that incapacitated him; in this case, it was an invisible hand pushing him back into the grasp of a massive, deadly creature, crushing his ribs. In _that_ case, it was Thrass — no longer endowed with the Sight, not to any significant degree — who attempted to land the ship, to save lives when Thrawn could not. But in both cases it was Thrawn’s failure to predict an unknown element and prepare — his failure to adapt — that sealed those fates. The same was true at Batonn; the same is true everywhere he goes.

And this Jedi is nothing like Thrass. 

Thrawn leaves the warmth of the shelter voluntarily, stepping out into the frozen night and leaving Bridger behind. Several kilometers to the north lie the ruins — and the weapons Thrawn has repaired and secreted away inside. Less than half a kilometer to the east lies the _Chimaera_. He hesitates just outside the shelter door, arms crossed tightly in front of his chest. Above him, a thin wash of snowflakes scatter on the wind, visible only when their paths cross with light from the distant, yellow-tinted moon. 

He feels Pyrondi’s holoprojector weighing heavily in his pocket and sets off for the _Chimaera’s_ wreck, the alarms beckoning him closer with every step. A weight seems to lift from his chest as he makes this decision, leaving him feeling lighter but strangely cold. He cannot kill the Jedi; he knows this, yet every day — multiple times a day — he must convince himself all over again, reciting the strategic reasons to keep the Jedi alive by rote.

As the hull of the ship comes into sight, he removes strips of grease-stained cloth from his pockets and wraps them around his hands. They protect the skin of his palms and fingers from the cold metal plates as he climbs, scaling the _Chimaera’s_ hull until he reaches an entrance painstakingly carved out with a vibroblade.

From there, Thrawn drops down into the crew quarters, careful to land at the right angle on the tilted deck. He skids downward on the incline, hitting his shoulder against the bulkhead to come to a stop. This portion of the _Chimaera_ is almost untouched by fire damage; he has yet to find a single living crewmember, nonetheless. For now, he walks past the closed quarters with his hand on the bulkhead for support, ignoring the stench of decay as much as he can — telling himself the bodies will keep, knowing they will not.

In any case, he can handle them later. For now he must deal with the almost deafening noise of the hull breach alarms, and to do that he needs to go deeper aft into the ship, away from the main passageways and into the engineering section of the _Chimaera_. 

He makes it no more than three steps before the body of a trooper blocks his path. Sprawled across the deck from one end of the passageway to the next, the trooper lies with his neck twisted, a pool of blood congealed beneath his skull. The black helmet is shattered, shards of it sticking from the trooper’s skull. Past this body, Thrawn’s night vision only goes so far, but he can make out the dark forms of other corpses in the hall.

He should ignore them. He has been scouting the _Chimaera’s_ wreckage for days now; he is certain — or as certain as he’ll ever be — that everyone aboard is dead, and the bodies can wait. The bodies will keep. They do not need to be removed right now, today; he’s already started digging graves, he’s already removed as many corpses as he could find in the hangar bay.

He has been awake for three days on this planet, resting only when his consciousness left him against his will — sleeping sometimes for an hour or two amongst the dead bodies of his crew. Sleeping other times in the cramped shelter, too close to Ezra Bridger for comfort, a fact that finds him waking sometimes with the taste of bile in his mouth. None of it can truly be called rest, and he won’t be functional for much longer if he continues searching for the bodies of his crew. 

He considers all of this, and then he lifts the technician’s body and slides it gently to the port bulkhead, supporting the broken skull with his hand. The corpse is limp in his hands, no longer rigid like the first few bodies Thrawn found. He takes a few more steps, careful not to lift his feet too far off the slanted ground, and stops centimeters away from another corpse.

He moves this one, too. Once he has the body lined up with the bulkhead, he folds the crewman’s arms over his chest and pulls the feet together so that the heels touch. Pain stabs through his ribs as he straightens up, but he keeps moving regardless, taking his crewmembers from where they lay sprawled and undignified, and arranging them peacefully against the wall.

He will have to move them again, later; in time, this planet will attract more sentients, and the wreck of the _Chimaera_ in particular will attract scavengers; he cannot allow them to disturb the bodies of his crew. The only thing he can do to prevent it — or the only thing his sleep-deprived mind can think of — is to lay them to rest elsewhere. To bury them outside.

And he can’t do that now, but he can at least do this.

He hauls another crewmember to the bulkhead. He recognizes her silhouette, though her face is unrecognizable now. This is Ensign Eully, a supply officer from the Mid Rim. She was assigned to the _Chimaera_ after the Battle of Atollon; as a supply officer — more importantly, as a trainee — she has not yet participated in battle. Not against the Rebels; not against anybody. 

He tilts her head to the north and moves on. The names of the other dead crewmembers play on a loop in his head as he tends to their bodies, each name beating to the pulse of the hull breach alarm. The engineering section is farther aft, several levels beneath the crushed bridge — a bridge no longer accessible to Thrawn, or at least not yet. Perhaps that will change when the Jedi wakes for good; perhaps not.

It should only take him fifteen minutes to reach engineering from the crew’s living quarters.

There are so many bodies that it takes him more than an hour.

The durasteel doors to the engineering section are wedged open by debris and the bisected body of a technician. Thrawn stoops, his limbs aching with fatigue as he moves the corpse aside. Congealed blood glues the technician’s uniform to the floor, and the material only separates with significant effort and a loud ripping sound. The technician’s intestines trail heavily over the floor as Thrawn moves the torso and steps inside.

The walkways here were entirely empty; anyone standing on the retractable catwalks would have been thrown off when the _Chimaera_ tilted toward the ground. Thrawn skirts the edge of the power core, unable to reach the maintenance ledge with the _Chimaera_ still partially on its side. He slams his fist against a dented control panel in the bulkhead nearby, catching a microfilament rope as it spools out. 

He knots it around his waist and under his arms, forming a harness in case he slips as he makes his way across the tilted bulkheads to the open maintenance chute nearby. Despite the heaviness of his limbs — and exhaustion tugging at his vision — he remains surefooted as he climbs inside.

A broken compscreen is still lit up inside the control station. Thrawn runs his hand over it, but it doesn’t respond to his touch; instead, it flickers and opens applications at will, attempting to run a software program that will likely never see the light of day again. He bypasses it, prying a power panel off the wall before him.

The switches are dead. He touches the first label — the system failure alarm — and runs his fingers down the line until he finds the hull breach. 

All the lights are off. The power has been cut. The hull breach alarm, according to this display, isn’t ringing. 

Thrawn stares at the labels a moment longer, not blinking, scarcely breathing. He toggles the switch; nothing changes. He checks the power source; over his shoulder, he can see the dead lights of the power column, and farther down — almost out of sight — the break in the column itself, where it shattered when the _Chimaera_ hit the ground. The central power cell is still running — not reliably, and not for long — but the alarms are sourced from the _forward_ power cell, which he already knows is dead. He can see that it’s dead with his own eyes.

He pulls away from the display, letting his hand drop to his side. The hull breach alarms aren’t ringing; worse, they can’t _possibly_ be ringing. What he hears is likely a hallucination; now that he’s seen the damaged power core, he knows it’s been a hallucination ever since he first heard it, when the _Chimaera_ struck the ground.

Numbly, he turns back to the passageway and climbs across. 

He can still hear the alarm blaring in his head. 

* * *

He trudged back to Thrawn when the bodies were buried, dropping the spade as he went. He could feel the constriction in his chest again, the tightness squeezing Thrawn’s lungs together. Carefully, projecting every move as he went, Ezra put his hand on Thrawn’s shoulder.

“You’re not breathing again,” he said.

Thrawn kept his eyes closed. His arms were crossed, his knees bent up to his chest. For someone who didn’t have a connection to his mind, he’d look restful, like someone taking a break after a long day of work. Ezra wondered how many times he’d missed something like this entirely — and not just him, but Thrawn’s human friends and subordinates in the Imperial Navy. How many times had they looked right at Thrawn in a moment like this and thought he looked fine?

He sat next to Thrawn with a sigh, feeling the other man’s quiet struggle to breathe, remembering how wrong it went the last time he tried to help. Ezra looked out at the gravesite, his shoulder touching Thrawn’s.

“You’re gonna have to trust me for this to work,” he said.

He felt, rather than heard, the wheeze of breath through Thrawn’s throat. When he glanced sideways, Thrawn’s eyes were still closed, the planes of his face hard.

“It doesn’t matter if I trust you,” Thrawn said. “Your abilities work whether the subject trusts you or not. What matters…”

He paused, sucking in a shallow breath. Through their connection, Ezra felt Thrawn’s lungs hitch and close up, refusing to let the air through.

“...is that I can’t succeed against the Grysks without help,” Thrawn continued, his voice tight. “And you are the only help I have.”

Ezra said nothing. He rolled to his knees and stretched his arm out to grab the spade he’d dropped on his way over. When he sat back down, he handed the spade back to Thrawn without a word. 

Thrawn’s hand opened, but his fingers didn’t close around the spade’s wooden handle. His breath hitched again; his chest expanded in a cut-off gasp and then froze there, unable to let anything else in or out. Through the Force, Ezra could feel him struggling, fighting against his own body for a single breath of air.

He reached out and closed Thrawn’s fingers gently over the handle. Without moving his hand away, he said,

“Will you just let me help?” And then, when Thrawn didn’t answer, he said, “Open your eyes.”

Thrawn did, his face a wooden mask. He stared out at the gravesite Ezra had helped dig — at the neat, orderly rows of fresh graves — at the wildflowers growing from each one, even the newest ones. For a moment, his thoughts seemed to freeze. His hand was cold beneath Ezra’s, cold and motionless, but after a long silence, a flicker of confusion broke through his unreadable expression, and his fingers twitched against the spade.

“You planted…” he said.

“It’s the living Force,” Ezra said. “It’s in everything, even flowers. All I had to do was convince them to grow.”

Thrawn didn’t respond. His eyes tracked over each new grave, then back to the _Chimaera_. His chest shuddered; he squeezed his eyes closed again.

“Yes,” he said suddenly.

Ezra stared at him, mouth half-open as he stumbled over a response, uncomprehending. “Yes…?”

“Yes,” said Thrawn, one hand pressed to his ribs. “Help me. I can’t breathe.” 

Ezra didn’t need to be told twice. He let the Force trickle through Thrawn’s body like a cold, soothing stream; he felt the _oth’ola endzali_ glow brighter against Thrawn’s skin, joining his efforts as if it had been waiting years for him to help. He felt the tension of adrenaline fade from Thrawn’s muscles, leaving him shivering — loosening his chest again — letting him breathe.

When he pulled away, Thrawn was staring at the _Chimaera_ again, his posture that of a man who had been through battle and wanted nothing more than to sleep.

“You okay?” Ezra asked, studying Thrawn’s face.

“Yes,” Thrawn said, his voice subdued. He stood carefully, using the spade to prop himself up, and offered his hand to Ezra. “Let’s go home.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra and Thrawn do laundry :^)

“You’re going to bed?” Thrawn asked, voice neutral, as they stepped into camp.

Ezra froze, one foot hovering above the ground in mid-step. His mind recalibrated quickly, taking in what he considered the most important data. It was past dark now, and he was exhausted, and he’d been up all day — _shouldn’t_ he be going to bed?

He turned to Thrawn, frowning a question at him, and Thrawn gave a shrug in response. His shoulders barely moved, like they were too heavy at the moment for Thrawn to really budge them. He looked as tired as Ezra felt, but cocked his head toward the river and said, almost apologetically, “We need to do laundry.”

After the day they’d had and the memories he’d seen, Ezra didn’t know whether this statement made him want to laugh or cry. He made a weak sound mixing both and wiped the grit out of his eyes with a grubby hand. 

“Right,” he said. “You’re right. You, uh, you want to do that now?”

They’d agreed early on that laundry was one of the chores they’d work together on as much as possible, with Thrawn doing the actual scrubbing — a mortifying situation, in Ezra’s opinion, and one he secretly tried to avoid as much as possible — while Ezra used the Force to extract drops of water from the cleaned clothes. Drying them like this wasn’t exactly _fast_ — not like the sonic dryers Ezra had used growing up — but it was still more efficient than hanging them from the trees or laying them out on slabs of rock beneath the sun.

“If you are too tired…” Thrawn started.

Ezra sighed. It couldn’t be avoided, he supposed; he’d put it off once the day before, and now they’d spent all day in the only clean clothes either of them had left, hiking through the woods, scavenging the _Chimaera’s_ wreck, and burying any bodies they came across. 

“It’ll be worth it to stay up late just to get this stink out of my clothes,” Ezra conceded reluctantly, plucking at the grimy hem of his shirt. He flashed a quick, guilty look at Thrawn, hoping too late that Thrawn would assume he meant the stink of sweat, not the smell of decay. 

But there was no readable expression on Thrawn’s face. He stepped past Ezra without a word and disappeared into his shelter, no doubt gathering his orderly crate of patchwork clothes. Ezra did the same — though his weren’t quite so orderly, and it took him a while to gather everything off the floor and throw it together into the box. He knew from experience that Thrawn’s clothes would be neatly folded and sorted according to type and material, even though none of them were clean. 

When he emerged from his shelter, Thrawn was already waiting for him at the edge of camp, facing the river. He started walking silently when Ezra caught up to him, both of them dragging their feet a little more than they normally would. Ezra took the ysalimir with him; even basic chores like this could be considered training if he had the ysalimir close at hand. 

They found a spot where the bank was low but not too damp; there was no moonlight shining through the thick canopy of trees, but Ezra knew by now that Thrawn didn’t really need it to see. He stretched out in the soft, pale grass, with the ysalimir rack nestled against his side, and stared up at the leaves waving lightly in the wind.

He could smell the sharp, antiseptic scent of their homemade soap as Thrawn unwrapped it; he heard the soft sound of the bar rustling against wet fabric in the river. It was a soothing, familiar sound, and it was just warm enough tonight for Ezra to feel completely relaxed where he lay, letting the tension leak out of his muscles after so many long hours of work. Ezra knew he wouldn’t be useful until Thrawn was done; it could take an hour, maybe even more, for him to reach that point.

He stroked the ysalimir’s fur and didn’t even notice that his eyes had closed and he was falling asleep.

* * *

He wakes groggily after the attack; the animal’s body is still draped over him, and perhaps that’s why he hasn’t frozen to death in the snow. Its fur has kept him warm even as its body turns cold with death. He eases it off of him, straining to un-pin his chest; with one harsh shove, the body rolls onto his legs, pinning those instead, but it’s relatively easy to pull his legs up and shake the animal free.

Looking down at his clothes — it hurts _massively_ to incline his head — he sees wet blood and shimmering sheets of pus coating his chest. He watches his hand move automatically, without his permission, to touch the mess. He tries to order it to stop; it doesn’t. His fingers edge right into the blood and pus.

He must have a concussion, he reflects. He sits up slowly, washes the gore off his hand in the nearby snow. When it’s clean, he touches the back of his head and feels more blood there, matted into his hair. 

He struggles to find his balance, but not his sense of direction. He knows the way back. The animal is large — almost as big as he is — and the walk back to civilization is long and cold, but once he pulls this in on the sled, he knows he won’t have any issues with the children at school. Not the ones in his grade, anyway. They’ll all be scared of him — and Father will be irritated that he sneaked off in the night or ventured across the icebergs on his own, but Mother will be pleased that he’s brought home such a bountiful source of food.

With the animal’s body secured on the sled, he ties the harness straps across his chest, leans his full weight forward, and sets off across the ice and snow toward home. Mother will make him wash his own clothes for this, and probably everyone else’s as well — his cousins, the elders — but it’s worth it. The pus and blood—

—has interesting qualities, Thrawn notes, dipping his fingers in the greenish blood and holding it to his nose. He feels a slight acidic crawl where it touches his skin; it may be effective as an ingredient in pesticide. When he lowers his hand, Admiral Ar’alani is staring at him with a curl of her lip that indicates disgust.

 _What the hell are you doing?_ she asks him.

He unfolds his handkerchief and wipes the blood off his fingers, then examines the cloth for damage. _The blood is acidic,_ he says, _but not by nature. It smells of citrus._

She steps closer to the body; her eyes shift from one jagged wound to the next. _So they were fed on citrus?_ she asks, her gaze shifting to the other murdered slaves. _What does that matter?_

 _It would matter a great deal,_ he says delicately. _Few planets in this area grow citrus; we could perhaps track the Grysks’ recent path based on the particular foods chosen for the slaves’ diet._

Ar’alani’s eyes light up.

 _But if they were simply fed on citrus, I wouldn’t be able to smell it from their blood,_ Thrawn says, tapping his nose. _I do not believe they were fed on citrus at all. You’re familiar with ilia poisoning? It has a persuasive effect on victims; it’s sometimes used in interrogations or brainwashing efforts in other militaries._

She looks at him. Her lips are set; her eyebrows are drawn low.

 _Ilia has a citric odor,_ Thrawn tells her. _It is occasionally noticed in autopsy by scent alone._

 _So they were poisoned?_ Ar’alani asks. _Then why did the Grysks use slugshooters on them at all?_

 _It is not a fatal poison,_ Thrawn asks. _Not in this species, that is. Perhaps it made them more docile; this would explain the lack of a struggle._

He indicated one or two areas across the room where, in similar scenes, they had seen signs of struggle. There were none here. Except where the slugshooters had damaged items, everything in the room was intact and upright. It appeared the slaves had allowed themselves to be corralled and shot without a fight.

 _So this is how they brainwash people,_ Ar’alani said, voice grim.

He has his doubts; he shifts his eyes to her but does not voice them. When she meets his gaze, she misreads his expression entirely.

 _Does it work on Chiss?_ she asks.

He hesitates, considers putting his real concerns into words. Instead, he answers her question. _Yes. It works. It has been used before; on Rentor, it was a common drug._

She doesn’t ask him whether it was the kind of drug people used willingly. She digests this, looks away, avoids his eyes.

Quietly, not wanting to upset her, he says, _We need allies, Ziara. We need_ —

— _Thrawn!_

He’s surprised to hear her call his name. He’s prepared for exile already; he wears his uniform still, stripped of its insignia, but his hair is long (in case he’s picked up sooner than expected in the Empire) and unruly. He doesn’t want Ar’alani to see it; it’s too late. She’s hurrying toward him from down the hall.

 _Admiral_ , he says; his tone is neutral but he feels himself tensing. Something in her posture warns him, sets his adrenaline running, makes him uncomfortable. There is open emotion on her face — anger and distress. As she approaches, his hands are clasped behind his back and he shifts them awkwardly, clasping the strap of his shoulder bag instead. He doesn’t know whether to prepare himself for a slap or an embrace. 

Perhaps this is why she succeeds in slapping him.

Hard.

His head snaps to the side, his cheek stinging, blood rushing to the surface with a surge of heat that he’s always disliked. He can tell from Ar’alani’s posture that she isn’t going to hit him again; he lifts his chin again and meets her eyes.

 _I suspect that will bruise,_ Ar’alani tells him archly.

Thrawn tries not to smile. _Well, it’s something to remember you by,_ he says.

 _Exile,_ she spits, not hearing him. Then his words register, her eyes narrow and her right arm twitches, the shoulder jerking up just one centimeter; she’s resisting the urge to slap him again, he realizes, and quickly kills the smile on his lips. 

_Exile,_ he says.

A certain coldness grips his chest, like a scrim of ice freezing around his ribs. He tries not to show it. In Ar’alani’s face, he sees the same coldness reflected back at him, but with an edge of anger that Thrawn simply doesn’t feel.

 _I won’t be gone forever,_ he promises her. _You know this._

 _We need you here,_ Ar’alani says. Her voice is raw. _We need you_ here _, Thrawn, not playing at wilderness survival somewhere in human territory. We need you_ —

—He finds a spider crawling over his fingers when he wakes. It’s small, its legs spindly, its body shaped differently from the cave spiders he saw as a child. He stands so smoothly, letting the animal hide blankets fall to the bed beneath him, that the spider doesn’t seem to notice it’s been moved. It skitters over his knuckles and has just made it to his wrist and he opens the window and tilts his arm outside, into the cool autumn air.

The spider reacts amiably, shifting its path to the stone walls of his hut without complaint. Outside, long stalks sway in the wind, each of them topped with a substance like cotton. He watches them, but his eyes are unfocused; he counts the time it takes for a stalk to sway from one end of its parabola to the other without thinking about it, just out of instinct.

Thrass would love it here, he thinks. The idleness, the beauty. It would remind of Copero, of everything he wished Copero would be after leaving the stark arctic landscape of Rentor. He’d adore it for a week, maybe two, and then he’d have to go back to the Syndicature or else he’d die of boredom.

Thrawn can relate. Outside his window, abandoned in the dying grass, is a little pile of figures and puzzles he’s whittled out of wood. He glances down at them in chagrin, remembering the last time he made one — sitting on his bed cross-legged while it hailed, a pan between his knees to catch the carvings — and then leaned over when he was done, pushing the window open and tossing the figurine out to decay in the wind and rain.

There’s no reason to make them. They serve no purpose; he could waste his time in better ways, theoretically — but he can’t deny that it would still be wasted. There were no trees on Rentor, other than the stunted shrubs that grew in the Great Family gardens; there was no wood, either, except for that specifically shipped to Rentor from other planets. There wasn’t enough of it to waste with creative pursuits.

He shouldn’t be tossing them to the ground outside his window, he realizes, or letting them drop from his hand as he walks through the woods. With a sigh, he leans out through the frame, stretches his arms as far as he can to collect them. These carvings are art; they could be discovered someday after he leaves here, used against him.

That night, he builds a fire and tosses his carvings into the flames. As it burns, he takes out his blade and a dead, dry twig, and starts to scrape the bark from its length in order to whittle a flower. This will go in the fire, too, when it’s done. Until then, he works assiduously, mindlessly. The blade slips, leaves a small abrasion—

—It’s abrasive work, slow work that scrapes the skin off his knuckles one layer at a time, but it’s necessary as well. It slows his mind almost like the _oth’ola endzali_ does, but without the laser-focus that seems vital to him so often during the day. He learned as a child that he can only sleep if he ends the day like this — either collapsing into bed after battle or by soothing himself to sleep with an hour or more of mindless, automatic work. 

It can be an hour of exercise; it can be an hour of cleaning; or it can be like this, an hour of menial chores with the night air cooling his skin and the river water turning his fingers numb. After sixty minutes he pauses, not quite done with the laundry, and tucks his hands beneath his shirt, against the warm skin of his abdomen, and waits for his sense of feeling to return. 

He picks through the Jedi’s clothes next, all of them ripe with the sharp scent of human sweat. He was overwhelmed the first time he stepped into a human training ground; he ducked out with his hands covering his nose before Vanto could stop him. It’s hard to explain why they train indoors instead of outdoors, when their scent so thoroughly grinds into the materials around them. 

Still, it doesn’t take long to clean. He scrubs the dirt and grass stains out of Ezra’s clothes; the skin on his knuckles is raw but not broken enough to bleed. It seems like his hands haven’t fully healed from the crash of the _Chimaera_ — he hasn’t given them the chance. He can’t stay still. 

When he finishes the last of Ezra’s garments, he drapes it atop the others — over the edge of the crates, so they don’t drag in the grass — and turns. The Jedi is sprawled out on his back, chin tilted up, mouth gaping open. His chest moves evenly but shallowly in sleep. Beneath the tangled fringe of his hair, his eyes are closed.

Gently, Thrawn reaches out and shakes him. “Ezra—”

* * *

“—Ezra?”

Ezra woke with a start, knocking Thrawn’s hand off him as he sat up. “What?”

Thrawn’s eyes slid away from him, toward the sodden clothes draped on the crates nearby. “It’s your turn.”

Ezra’s brain stuttered. He looked at the clothes, not comprehending. “My turn?”

“To dry them,” said Thrawn patiently. 

“But I _washed_ them,” said Ezra. He could hear the confusion in his voice; he could see it in Thrawn’s face, too. Then, all at once, the pieces fit together, and Ezra realized that he’d been sleeping, that it was Thrawn who’d washed the clothes, that Ezra only thought he had because he’d been in Thrawn’s mind at the time, by accident.

He leaned forward, scrubbing at his hands with a sigh as he processed it all. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s the mind-reading thing. I got confused.”

Thrawn said nothing; through the Force, Ezra sensed an unnatural stillness that made him raise his head.

“What?” he asked, studying Thrawn. Thrawn shifted, uncrossing his legs, planting his palms firmly on the grass. 

“I didn’t _feel_ you in my mind,” he said. It sounded like he was making an effort to sound neutral.

“Oh,” said Ezra. He felt like he was standing on uneven ground; Thrawn’s tone was impossible to read. Was he angry, after everything they'd done today, that Ezra had read his mind by accident? Or was he glad the process was so natural for him now? Upset with himself because he couldn’t sense Ezra’s presence at the time?

Then suddenly Thrawn’s eyes shifted down past Ezra, to something in the grass behind him. He turned, reaching out by instinct, and then saw what Thrawn was looking at.

The ysalimir.

The ysalimir sitting right next to Ezra.

The ysalimir that should have been blocking his ability to read Thrawn’s mind entirely.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heading into the grand finale next chap. Would you guys prefer multiple small chapters or two massive chapters? Either way, I don't think my end count is actually gonna be 25 chapters lmao.

The next night, they burned their shelters to the ground.

Ezra stood outside the ring he and Thrawn had drawn in the dirt with sap, letting the flames warm his face. A hot breeze blew his hair back from his forehead and sent a few red cinders his way; they smoldered in the dirt near his boots or winked out of existence on his sleeves, none of them bringing him any harm. He remembered the way the Chimaera had burned and forced himself to take a deep breath.

He hadn’t taken anything with him before setting fire to the huts. And other than his _oth’ola endzali,_ neither had Thrawn. Their clothes were burning; their small collection of primitive, hand-made weaponry and tools was burning, too. Somewhere inside Thrawn’s shelter, Pyrondi’s holoprojector twisted in the heat, the casing melting off the frame, the storage card inside it starting to curl. 

Ezra breathed in, smelling the smoke and ash in the air. The ysalimir was perched on his shoulders, but even so, he could read Thrawn’s mind almost as clearly as he could without it now. He turned to face him, eyed the _oth’ola endzali_ around his neck, thought of the holoprojector again.

“You’re actually _excited_ , you bastard,” Ezra observed as Thrawn's thoughts and emotions twisted before him. “Aren’t you?”

Thrawn gripped his pendant in one hand and smiled. His thoughts raced toward weaponry — a ship — an entire _fleet_ of ships — feeling useful again — and then to more mundane things. A hot shower, food seasoned and cooked without urgency, a serviceable bed. Faces flashed through his mind, dim possibilities but there nonetheless — and Ezra couldn’t blame him. 

In his own mind, he saw Sabine — Zeb — Hera — even Hondo. He looked back at the fire and felt his own smile fading away.

“We could still die trying, you know,” he said. 

This statement didn’t curb Thrawn’s enthusiasm one bit.

“Then we go out fighting,” he said with a shrug, as if it didn’t matter. “Better than dying here. Useless. Old.”

Ezra snorted. “Yeah, speak for yourself. I’d still like to make it to twenty.”

He felt the sense of anticipation fade in Thrawn a little — purposefully muted, he suspected, out of respect for the conflict in Ezra. But that wasn’t right at all, because if he was honest with himself, Ezra was excited, too — and there was no need for Thrawn to censor himself on Ezra’s behalf.

Watching the shelters burn, Ezra reached up and stroked the ysalimir beneath its chin. 

“I always thought we’d be rescued, if anything,” he murmured. 

Thrawn didn’t reply for a moment, but Ezra could feel him holding back a scoff. He turned to Thrawn with a frown.

“What?” he asked.

Thrawn met his eyes, the flames reflecting off his blue skin. “We’re ten times more competent than anyone who would rescue us,” he said loftily. He stepped gracefully out of the way when Ezra tried to punch him in the shoulder—

— _any day now, right?_ Vurawn says. _Because your Sight is fading?_

The memory faded as abruptly as it started, just as the image of Thrawn’s twelve-year-old brother aimed a blow at his head. The sound of a child's laughter followed Ezra even as the images dissolved completely. He remembered seeing this memory once before, remembered that Thrass — Vuras, whatever — had missed when he tried to punch Thrawn, too. He stopped, taking a deep breath, looking away from Thrawn. His knuckles brushed Thrawn’s shoulder as his hand came down, his fist loosening.

Suddenly, he was unable to bear it. 

If Thrawn died in the fight — if only Ezra survived—

If Ezra survived _again—_

He closed his eyes with the weight of the ysalimir on his shoulders. He thought of the plan, ran through every little step in his mind again. This was different from the wreck of the _Chimaera_ , he told himself. This was Ezra’s connection to the Force combined with Thrawn’s military tactics, a combination unlike anything the galaxy had seen before — or so he told himself. This was him and Thrawn working together for once.

This was him and Thrawn as—

He thought of the memory with Vuras and Vurawn and swallowed the end of that sentence before he could even think it.

Eyes still closed, he felt Thrawn’s hand come down gently on his arm and guide him away. He let himself be led, completely blind, trusting Thrawn not to let him trip or fall. When he felt the trunk of a tree against his back and the slight downward tug of Thrawn’s hands, he slid to the ground without complaint.

He felt Thrawn sit beside him through the Force more than through his senses. There was a brush of air as Thrawn settled at his side. 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Thrawn told him, his voice soft, his arm brushing up against Ezra’s. “You’re projecting your thoughts again.”

Ezra grimaced.

“And you’re laboring under a misconception,” Thrawn added. After a moment, he reached over, his palm cool and dry, and took Ezra’s hand, squeezing it the same way he had once squeezed the hand of a Chiss sky-walker overwhelmed after a long day. He didn’t let go. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle, almost inaudible. 

“You can think of us as brothers if you must,” he said. “If you need to think of me as family somehow in order to be my ally, then fine. At this point, I certainly won’t complain.”

Ezra felt some of the tension drain away from him at that. He got a muted sense from Thrawn that he could only identify as a faint glow, as if Thrawn felt slightly more than just _tolerance_ for that decision, but didn’t want to admit it.

“And you can rest for the night now,” Thrawn added in the same tone. “The preparations have all been made. All that’s left is to send the signal — and that can wait until morning.”

Ezra nodded. Thrawn squeezed his hand again.

“And if I die tomorrow,” Thrawn said lightly, “you’re dying, too.”

He let Ezra’s hand go. Suddenly cold, Ezra opened his eyes and stared at the roaring fire fifteen meters away.

“So don’t worry about survivor’s guilt,,” Thrawn murmured, his eyes half-lidded and set on the fire as well. He settled back against the tree trunk, looking comfortable as could be. 

“That’s not very comforting,” Ezra told him wryly, trying to ignore the fact that somehow — inexplicably — he _did_ feel better. Thrawn met his eyes and smiled.

“Too bad,” he said. “We’re sending the signal tomorrow anyway.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Grysks pick up a strange signal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm relieved to say that I did the math last night and I should actually hit 25 chapters, with three large chapters finishing out the finale XD

She wished more than anything that the Grysks would stop sending her to this sector, but if there was one thing Oss’ka had learned over the past few years, it was that the Grysks didn’t care what she wanted. 

It wasn’t that this sector was particularly difficult to navigate — in fact, if anything, it was easier than most. The planets here were primitive and uninhabited, and the space around them was free of trash and debris. There were few asteroids in the area, no supernovas, no collapsing stars to be wary of—

—but Oss’ka would take all three of those over the oppressive feeling of death lurking here. 

She stood at the helm, her face grim, while the Grysk ship floated almost lazily through space. It seemed to her that she’d spent years of her life here by now; some other navigator had been stupid enough — or scared enough — to mention the aura of death, and now Oss’ka was stuck patrolling here damn near every week. 

This is where the Chiss admiral crashed, they said. That’s what the aura of death was — they said a massive spaceship, bigger than any Oss’ka had ever seen, had crashed here somewhere, on one of the innocent-looking planets below. To Oss’ka, it seemed far-fetched. More than one of the planets in this sector was scarred by genocide; the Grysks had been here many times before, and the slaves they’d collected still lived and fought for them on this ship, on other ships. If the aura of death came from anywhere, Oss’ka thought, it was probably from the ancestors of the brainwashed aliens who guarded her even now. 

And she hadn’t mentioned this to her handlers — not yet, maybe not ever — but the aura didn’t pervade the entire sector. In fact, while it was noticeable from anywhere in the vicinity, there were only three places the aura could have been coming from: the planet called Preta, its moon Preta I, and—

She sneaked a pensive glance at the alien who stood beside her, his grey fur neatly combed, his ears scarred by battle.

—and Sera Dun, the deserted planet where Commander Peithh and all the other weasel-like aliens onboard had come from. Or at least, where his _ancestors_ had come from. Where his ancestors, brainwashed by the Grysks, had turned on their friends and neighbors and systematically killed everyone they knew. They still called themselves the Sai Duni, as if their loyalty were to the uninhabited planet below, but as far as Oss’ka was concerned, they were just another flavor of Grysk.

From what Oss’ka understood, Sera Dun had been abandoned for years. She didn’t expect to feel anything when they flew over it this patrol, just like she hadn’t felt anything the last hundred times.

But just as they entered the vicinity, a signal came through. 

“Alert,” said the insectoid alien at the communications station. “Signal coming through. Signal coming through.”

“Play it out,” said Commander Peithh. His voice was measured and calm, but everyone on the bridge was tense now, ready to go to battle stations at any second — and Peithh wasn’t excluded. The bristly fur on the back of his neck stood on end.

As the insectoid alien played the signal, everyone on the bridge held their breath. There were no words to the signal, only sounds — a code Oss’ka didn’t recognize, perhaps Chiss, perhaps Imperial, perhaps something else entirely. It played over and over again, met by blank stares and bitten lips all around.

But there was one thing Oss’ka did recognize, something that made her heart beat in her chest. Whoever had sent that signal had broadcasted more than he meant to, more than just a code — there was a sense attached to every digital note, a sense that was subtle but unmistakable. 

The man who’d sent the signal was wearing a wayfinder. His broadcast, without his knowledge, included the carefully-preserved Third Sight of somebody long dead. 

The man who’d sent the signal was Chiss, Oss’ka realized, heart thumping in her chest. She looked sideways at Commander Peithh and the other Sai Duni, checking to see if they’d noticed or if it was just her — if it was her talent with the Sight that allowed her to sense it, or even if it was something stronger, a species-related bond that nobody but a Chiss could feel.

She saw the recognition in their eyes; they knew it as well as she did: they’d found him. 

They’d found Thrawn.

* * *

“Confirm,” the Grysk said.

From behind the video feed, Oss’ka studied Commander Peithh’s face. His lips pulled back; his mouth was shaped wrong to pronounce anything in Cheunh, but he didn’t flinch from the task.

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” he said. Then, switching back to the Grysk trade language, “Our navigator has confirmed it. She senses that it’s him.”

He didn’t gesture to Oss’ka as he said this, and for that, she was privately glad. Some of the Sai Duni tried to force her to speak to the Grysks for them as much as possible; Commander Peithh was one of the few who let her listen to his calls, but pretended she wasn’t there. That was how she preferred it; it gave her chills to speak to the Grysks.

“You will take the Hellspring, a troop transport, and six fighters,” said the Grysk levelly. “And you will take a full division of your best men — the Chiss girl, as well. Do not take any chances, Sai Duni. If Mitth’raw’nuruodo is alive, it is your life-goal to capture him.”

The gravity of that word, _life-goal_ , settled over Oss’ka so heavily it made her shudder. Across from her, Commander Peithh received the order without expression, but it had to affect him worse than it did her. For slaves like the Sai Duni, there was no worse word than ‘life-goal.’ If he failed to accomplish what the Grysks wanted from him, his own brainwashing would ensure that he died trying.

“You understand your orders?” asked the Grysk.

Peithh bowed his head. He folded at the waist in a gesture of respect, his lean body looking half-starved in the dim light. His eye twitched, a facial tic that kicked in when the neural paths of his brain were being altered. Oss’ka had seen it before.

“I understand,” he said. 

And then, meeting Oss’ka’s glowing red eyes, he added,

“I will not fail.”

* * *

Oss’ka joined the rest of the Sai Duni in their new ship, taking her place at the helm while the pilot, a hulking officer named Fossk, steered the ship toward the planet these people’s ancestors once called home. For Oss’ka, who grew up on Copero, it was impossible to imagine forgetting your home planet — or having a family and never introducing your children to the place you once called home.

Hard to imagine, yes — but it was most likely her fate. Her eyes stung as she stared out the viewport, refusing to think about it. She had no guarantee the Grysks would return her to the Ascendancy when her service was done; there was no one who would answer her questions on the flagship, and on a small mission like this, there was no one who _could_ answer them if she tried. 

She glanced past Fossk to Commander Peithh, who looked even leaner than before compared to his pilot. Most of the Sai Duni tended toward thinness, with a rangy body type that ensured anyone looking at them could tell when they’d angered a Grysk and been denied food. Uleppe, a gray-furred female Sai Duni, shared the same lean figure as Peithh, and so did the soldiers at their stations.

So why was Fossk so big? Studying him — the hard glint to his eyes, the belligerent posture, the cruel slant to his mouth when he glanced back at her — Oss’ka imagined she could figure it out. He didn’t show any of the mild facial tics or cringes the other Sai Duni did when they received unpleasant orders; he carried them out stone-faced, never flinching.

Maybe he wasn’t brainwashed at all, Oss’ka mused, grasping the rail in front of her harder. Maybe this was the lifestyle he would have chosen for himself, if given the chance.

If so, then he was the only one. 

She let the Sight guide her through space, following the faint signal from Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s wayfinder down to the planet once known as Sera Dun. Her heart pounded as it faded in and out of her Sight; each touch of it was exhilarating, reminding her how it felt to see and speak with another Chiss — especially one with the Sight.

Of course, it wasn’t the same. Mitth’raw’nuroudo himself was not a navigator; she could tell. The distinctive color of the Sight came from someone long-dead — someone close to him, though, someone whose soul was closely bonded to his. A family member, she guessed. Someone he loved deeply, like a brother.

And now that person’s life energy was drawing Thrawn to his death.

She twitched out of her reverie when Commander Uleppe brushed up next to her. Oss’ka rearranged her face, trying to look as serene and focused as a navigator was supposed to — but she must not have fully achieved the effect. Leaning down, Commander Uleppe whispered,

“You’re worried for him?”

Her nose twitched as she said it, the same way Peithh’s eyes twitched when the Grysks told him what to do. Oss’ka hesitated, measuring her words.

“I want it to be a quick death,” she said finally, deciding this was safe to admit. “He is a Chiss, like me. I don’t want him to suffer.”

She kept her eyes on the viewport as she spoke; she could feel Uleppe studying her and knew from experience that Uleppe, like Peithh, was more observant than most. Perhaps she’d chosen the wrong defense here; species-related empathy might work with any other aliens, but these were the Sai Duni. They were here on this ship right now because their ancestors had turned on their neighbors and friends. If there was any empathy here, it was in remarkably short supply. 

This thought brought another heart-thumping wave of dismay to her chest; she imagined being wrecked like this unknown Chiss was, stranded on a planet all alone, no escape, nobody to talk to — and then just when you think you’re getting rescued—

Pushing the thoughts away, she turned to Uleppe and forced a look of wide-eyed curiosity on her face.

“Do you remember Sera Dun, ma’am?” she asked, knowing Uleppe didn’t. Across the bridge, Sai Duni stirred at her words, most of them taking notice of their planet’s name. Next to her, though, Fossk remained deadly still.

“I do not,” said Uleppe, her voice smooth, unbothered. “It was before my time.”

“Your parents, though?” asked Oss’ka, eyeing Uleppe’s gray fur. “Did they tell you about it?”

If it were Oss’ka, and if she were talking about Copero, this question would keep her occupied for hours. She hoped Uleppe would tell her something of the terrain, the landmarks and peculiar formations that couldn’t be seen anywhere else — of the seasons, how short or long they were and how extreme — of the alien species who used to live there, the customs, the lost languages, the wildlife and abandoned histories and crumbling cities that must surely be waiting there for them. 

Leaning closer to the navport, Uleppe scanned the planet rapidly coming into sight beneath them. Her nose twitched again.

“They told me it was cold,” she said neutrally, drawing back with a sniff. “It doesn’t look so cold to me.”

* * *

The beacon led them straight to an old stone ruins, but Commander Peithh only studied the scanners for a moment before waving them on. With a grunt of disapproval, Fossk adjusted their trajectory and moved past the ruins entirely; it didn’t take a genius to see he wasn’t pleased with the decision. He’d had one hand halfway through the landing protocol when Peithh stopped him.

“Keep moving,” said Peithh, his voice detached, his eyes on the scanners. “We’re looking for the crash site first and foremost. From there we can find our target, assuming he’s moved.”

Assuming he’s moved? Oss’ka puzzled over that privately, keeping her eyes on the video feed of the forest below them. Why wouldn’t he have moved? Did Peithh think he might have used the ship for shelter, even though it was wrecked? 

She kept silent as their ship traced over the forest, moving in broad circles toward the scar in the trees they could all see farther south. Oss’ka sneaked glances at the Sai Duni; almost all of them were studying the sensor displays, searching for any trace of life before they even reached the shipwreck. A chill went through her; it was the same efficiency she’d seen on Ascendancy ships before being sold to the Grysks, but with an edge of desperation to it — a single-mindedness that Chiss soldiers could never accomplish, not with their minds eternally split between the mission and the family politics which drove it.

She turned back to the viewport with a shudder. Thrawn didn’t stand a chance. 

“Here we are,” said Fossk, his voice carrying across the bridge to Commander Peithh. “Look at that.”

There was an eagerness to his tone that Oss’ka didn’t like. She leaned forward as the wreckage came into view, stealing her breath away at once. It made sense to her now why the scars in the forest were so large — the ship Thrawn had crash-landed here was _huge_ , bigger than anything Oss’ka had seen in the fleet, bigger even than the warships helmed by Chiss admirals or the massive carriers Grysks used to transport slaves. 

One Chiss had manned that ship? Oss’ka eyed it dubiously, rejecting this option out of hand. The Grysks never told their servants everything, but here it was clear they’d omitted more than usual. They weren’t just here to capture Thrawn; from the size of this ship, it looked like they were here to fight an entire army.

Commander Uleppe and Fossk seemed to have come to the same conclusion. They bent over the scanner, Fossk’s lips pulling back in excitement, Uleppe’s brow furrowing low over her eyes. She glanced up sharply, then, and Oss’ka could see her silently taking stock of the Sai Duni soldiers — the fighters — the meager weaponry available to them. When all was said and done, she turned to look at Commander Peithh with a frown.

“Peithh—” she started. She cut herself off almost instantly, nose twitching, and hurried to join him at his console. Oss’ka adjusted her stance subtly, putting herself within earshot of the conversation.

“Peithh, this is more than just one man,” Uleppe whispered. “That ship is big enough for tens of thousands of aliens, not to mention fighters, weaponry—”

Oss’ka fiddled with the control board to her side; it gave her an excuse to turn her head just slightly, so she could see the expression on Peithh’s face. 

“Look again,” he told Uleppe, his voice calm. Then, loudly enough for the entire bridge to hear him, “Fossk, adjust trajectory thirteen degrees. Yaw to starboard.”

Fossk hesitated just long enough to make a point, then did as his commander said. Peithh’s expression didn’t change at the flicker of insubordination; perhaps he was used to it — he’d done plenty of missions with Fossk in the past, had probably watched the pilot grow from a pup. He’d had plenty of time to learn Fossk’s behavioral patterns and to accept what could not be changed.

But privately, Oss’ka suspected Fossk would never show the same insubordination to the Grysks. And if she knew that, Peithh had to know it, too.

Their ship veered to the south per Peithh’s command, passing over a mountain of debris outside the wreck. A few hundred meters away, at the edge of the forest, there was a field cleared between the trees. The earth there was soft and brown, recently upturned; the grass and flowers were coming in patchy and new.

“That, Commander Uleppe, is a mass grave,” said Peithh. “Look at the wreckage again; you see how it twists and turns on itself? The fire damage scoring the hulls? I suspect this man Thrawn was the only survivor. Perhaps, as commander of the ship, he had access to an escape pod the rest of his men did not — or perhaps it was simply an unfortunate twist of fate. As for the weaponry…”

He leaned forward over his control station, calling up a section of the scanners’ input and magnifying it tenfold. Craning her neck, Oss’ka saw that it was an image of the wreckage outside the ship. She stepped closer, trying to be unobtrusive, and then blushed a pale shade of purple when Uleppe and Peithh silently made room for her. Obviously, she wasn’t quite as sneaky as she thought. 

“Look here,” Peithh said, indicating the pile of debris directly outside the massive ship’s hangar doors. “These pieces—” He traced the curve of a black metal panel with his claw, then pointed out the dull grey durasteel beneath it. “—do not fit together. Different types of metal, different paint jobs, different consistencies. In fact, none of it fits together right. Most likely, there were enough explosives inside the hangar bay to destroy almost all technology and weaponry inside on impact. The crew, too — that goes without saying.”

He banished the image and called over to Fossk, “Resume trajectory. Fan out over the forest, Fossk. We’re looking for a makeshift shelter, signs of life. Pay special attention to ravines and gorges, any sort of outcropping or cave.”

“A cave, sir?” There was a frown in Uleppe’s voice. “There are plenty of old Sai Duni settlements in the area. Not all of them were burned to the ground — I think it more likely he’d take shelter there rather than build a new one.”

“No,” said Peithh. “Somehow, I doubt he took advantage of them.” He gestured absently in Oss’ka’s direction. “The Chiss are a proud, self-sufficient, resourceful species — and they’re burrowing creatures. They prefer the underground — caves and caverns, anywhere they can hide from the sun. Anywhere cool. He’l have made his own shelter not far from here.”

Oss’ka grimaced at that. She’d half-hoped it wouldn’t occur to Peithh that a Chiss would naturally seek shelter belowground, unlike the water- and sun-loving Sai Duni. Clearly, he’d done his homework. Lowering his voice again, Peithh turned to Uleppe and said,

“We won’t count out the possibility that he has some weaponry. He was able to build or scavenge a transmitter, after all — most likely scavenge. Once we find his shelter, assuming he’s not inside, we can pick it over for more clues, get a grasp on his threat level.”

He glanced at Oss’ka and his eyes twitched; for a moment, there was an awful prickling feeling on the back of Oss’ka’s neck, and she worried he might ask for her input — or call in the Grysks, even, and compel her to answer. But Peithh’s eyes eventually shifted away, and Oss’ka could breathe easy again.

There was something Peithh had missed in the wreckage. _She’d_ noticed it; she didn’t think anyone else had.

Heart thumping, Oss’ka returned to her station and called up the images from the sensor data again. She confirmed the evidence silently and then trashed one image in particular, turning to the viewport with her mouth set and her eyes wide.

The hulls of Thrawn’s wrecked ship had been twisted and melted, yes. But on the far side of the wreck, away from the hangar bay, there was something different about them. Something off. Like the ship had hit the ground, and the walls had collapsed on themselves, and …

And something, Oss’ka didn’t know what, had pried them back open again. The hole on that side of the ship had been small, almost unnoticeable compared to the sheer size of the ship itself — but it was at least three meters high, and there were no tools or levers scattered on the ground nearby. No Chiss could pry melted durasteel apart. Not unaided. Not without tools. 

Perhaps Peithh had noticed the hole; perhaps he’d analyzed it already and silently dismissed it, chalking it up to a wild animal — that was theoretically possible, right? But somehow, instinctively, Oss’ka knew it was wrong. She had an advantage over Peithh — the Sight. She could almost taste Thrawn’s signature life energy on the wreckage of the ship, particularly around the makeshift passageway inside. He must have spent hours there — days, weeks — pulling out the bodies of his men.

What kind of power did he have, exactly, that allowed him to twist the walls of a massive ship apart at will?

* * *

They circled the camp five times before Peithh finally gave the order to land. He scrambled the fighters first, putting each of them in orbit around the forest while a landing party took to the river. Fossk didn’t look too happy to be part of the landing party, Oss’ka noticed; he eyed the fighters above him as he took his first step onto land and then glanced around at the burnt-out shelter with contempt.

Clearly, he expected any action today to come from the air. Maybe he thought Thrawn had a fighter of his own, or maybe — and Oss’ka found this more likely — he just wanted to be up there with his fingers on the turbolaser trigger when their prey came into view.

He noticed her watching him and met her eyes; Oss’ka looked away quickly, heart pounding, and rushed to catch up with Uleppe and Peithh. They stood at the edge of the shelter, watching as a squadron of soldiers poked through the ashes and debris.

“It’s still warm, sir,” a soldier named Tregh announced from where he crouched in the center of a collapsed hut. He clapped the ash off his hands and accepted a long stick from Commander Peithh, using it to sift through what little evidence remained.

“He must have seen us enter the atmosphere,” said Uleppe, not sounding particularly surprised.

“And assumed we were enemies, not rescuers,” Peithh mused. “That’s interesting, don’t you think? To hide from an unknown ship at first, that’s not so unusual — anyone of sound mind would want to survey the situation before revealing themselves. But to go so far as to burn his shelter, that suggests a degree of _certainty_. He doesn’t _think_ we are the enemy; he _knows_.”

Oss’ka crossed her arms tightly over her chest, watching as the soldiers lifted charred remnants of wood and checked beneath them for any sign of modern technology. One of them kicked up a blackened piece of metal and caught it with his hand, then tossed it over to the commanders. Uleppe caught it easily and turned it over, examining it from every angle.

“Some sort of communicator?” she said.

Oss’ka stood on tiptoe, trying to get a better look before Peithh took it away. She didn’t recognize it; not a Chiss communicator then, just like the wrecked ship back north hadn’t been a Chiss ship.

Who exactly _was_ this guy? she wondered. Peithh examined the communicator closely, then held it up for Oss’ka to see.

“Recognize this?” he asked, eye twitching.

Silently, Oss’ka shook her head. 

“Not one of yours, then?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” said Oss’ka. “And—” She hesitated, not wanting to sound stupid. “And I don’t think it works, sir.”

“Hm.” He flipped it around his fingers, leaving trails of soot on his fur, and then tossed it to a higher-ranking soldier named Mossil. Mossil slipped into his pocket without a second glance. When Peithh turned back to Oss’ka, there was a faint smile on his lips. “No, I don’t suppose it does. Maybe it was cannibalized for parts; he could have used it to build the transmitter. Or maybe he’s just collecting scraps — is there anything else worth noting in there, Tregh?”

The soldier in question straightened up, a scrap of burnt fabric in his hand and a piece of sharpened stone in the other. “Looks like a piece of netting, sir,” he said, brandishing the fabric. “And a home-made gutting knife.”

When Peithh motioned him over, Tregh stepped gingerly through the ash and then hurried over, placing the knife in his commander’s open hand. Uleppe leaned forward to cast a critical eye over the blade before she and Peithh nodded at each other.

“So he’s primitive?” asked Tregh, a hopeful lilt to his voice. 

“All this tells us,” said Uleppe, indicating the knife, “is that he couldn’t gut fish with his blaster.”

Tregh winced at that, ducking his head. Oss’ka could sympathize; she wasn’t much younger than Tregh and the other soldiers, and she knew how it felt to be corrected in front of the rest of the crew. Still, she was more embarrassed for him than sympathetic; how could anyone look at that massive ship back there and then assume Thrawn was primitive, just because of a simple knife?

Maybe if it was just Thrawn against the enlisted soldiers, things would be different, Oss’ka thought wistfully. The odds weren’t great for one Chiss against three squadrons of Sai Duni in their prime — but Thrawn was a Mitth adoptive, and a soldier in his own right, and maybe he would have stood a chance. Despite herself, Oss’ka wished he could escape; if it weren’t for the punishment the Grysks would level at her and the Sai Duni, maybe she would have even helped him.

But the bottom line was that it _wasn’t_ just Thrawn against the enlisted men. It was Thrawn against Fossk, who stole food from smaller Sai Duni and followed the Grysks’ most brutal orders with glee. It was Thrawn against Commander Uleppe, who’d weathered a thousand battles and still had only one scar.

It was Thrawn against Commander Peithh, who had the sharpest eyes Oss’ka had ever seen and the patience necessary to wait out any war of attrition. 

She bit her lip as the Sai Duni soldiers continued their search. She could only hope that when they found Thrawn, the battle would be quick and painless. She could tell herself it was a mercy killing. And in a way, it would be.

Anything was better than being taken by the Grysks.

* * *

“Our target is alone and he’s weaponless,” said Commander Uleppe to the leader of Camma Squadron, her voice brisk. “That makes him easy to pick off.”

She adjusted the young Sai Duni’s protective vest as she spoke, and Oss’ka couldn’t help but wonder if this was because it really needed adjusting or because the soldier — not yet a fully-fledged adult — looked like he could use some comfort before heading out. His face was spasming with barely-concealed fear, and the other men behind him didn’t look much better off. Some of them looked queasy; others were shifting restlessly, adrenaline compelling them to either rush into battle or run away. 

Oss’ka wasn’t fooled, of course. She could feel the nerves emanating from them like an aura, but she could feel the determination, too, and knew that most of them had a steely disposition underneath it all, just waiting to come out. Each of these Sai Duni, young as they seemed, had been in battle before. They all bore the scars of slavery. And most importantly, they had leadership they trusted and admired — whether naturally or through the Grysks’ brainwashing service, she didn’t know.

With Uleppe instructing them over comm — and Fossk instructing Bayna Squadron, and Peithh himself in charge of Arkka — the only way Thrawn stood a chance was if he somehow separated the squadrons from their leadership, broke off communication, and stranded the soldiers on their own.

One man couldn’t do that, Oss’ka assured herself. She couldn’t be sure if this thought brought her more nausea or relief.

“There are subtle signs of the target’s presence around this camp,” Uleppe continued, her hands folded behind her back, her posture upright and commanding. She could never stand like that before the Grysks, Oss’ka thought, and it was a true shame — out here on the battlefield, in front of her men, Uleppe looked like the commander she was. In front of the Grysks, no one could help but tremble as they bowed. In front of the Grysks, there was no such thing as dignity.

“Tell me what you see, Welbh,” Uleppe ordered.

The young soldier in charge of Bayna Squadron hesitated. His eyes tracked nervously over the campsite, but at a slow enough pace that Oss’ka knew he was really making an effort. For a fleeting moment, she hoped he’d find nothing, that he was too inexperienced to track the enemy without aid.

“Bent blades of grass to the east, ma’am,” he said at once. Then, angling his head sideways, he squinted and said, “Traces of soot on a wildflower farther out along the same track.”

“And elsewhere?” Uleppe prompted.

“Elsewhere, snapped twigs and bent branches,” said Welbh, indicating the obvious signs of movement to the south. “Faint, partial footprints here and there. All to the south, none to the east.”

“Conclusion?” Uleppe said.

Welbh straightened up. A sense of confidence surged through him, changing his carriage entirely and making him look older than he was. “An obvious set-up, ma’am,” he said. “The Chiss is attempting to lure us southward. He’s left subtle hints that way, subtle enough that most people wouldn’t be suspicious. He’s hoping we’ll be _just_ astute enough to pick them up and follow, but the traces to the east … they’ve almost been erased entirely. I wouldn’t have noticed them at all, ma’am, if not for his scent.”

Oss’ka ducked her head, face frozen into a wooden mask. Of course. The Sai Duni had told her more than once now that Chiss had a peculiar, almost overwhelming body odor — they said they could smell the Ice Age in her sweat. It was a glacial odor, crisp and chemical and unappealing to the more earthy Sai Duni. She bit out a curse between her teeth; Thrawn had put his best efforts in here, but of course he couldn’t have known how sensitive the Sai Duni were, or that they’d already been exposed to his species’ scent.

“Very good, Welbh,” said Uleppe. “Take your men eastward, and stay in contact.”

She smiled, snout twitching as she did. Across the campsite, Fossk glanced back and shared her smile. It looked bloodthirsty to Uleppe; it looked unhinged.

“Let us know when you’ve found the target,” Uleppe said.

* * *

It took every ounce of willpower Welbh had to slow his pace. Competence was better than quickness, he told himself, especially when he was answering to Commander Uleppe and not directly to the Grysks. The path the Chiss had taken was overgrown and slanted downward, difficult to walk down rather than run, which only made him want to run down it even more. But he had to be slow and careful — like Uleppe or Peithh would be. He had to fight the adrenaline coursing through him and stay calm for his men.

He had to fight the twitch of Grysk influence over his mind, too — the voice in his head that whispered to hurry, to fight, to kill. Welbh would do the last two, no problem, but he couldn’t accomplish either if he obeyed the first command and hurried. 

He eyed the increasingly difficult-to-spot signs of their target’s presence, creeping forward down the path of least resistance on a trail clogged with underbrush and debris. He walked sideways, on the edges of his feet with his weapon held out before him, trying to avoid the random animal burrows and fallen branches that blocked his path.

Luckily for him, it wasn’t _completely_ untraversable. The Chiss had been here before, after all, and he’d gotten through somehow. Here and there, Welbh deviated from the straight-and-narrow easterly vector, taking small detours to go over rotten tree trunks or around massive boulders that rested in his path. He ducked beneath thorny tangles and picked his way through knee-high plants covered in needle-sharp stingers, and his men followed him silently the entire way. 

He glanced back at them as he stepped onto level ground for the first time in fifteen minutes and squeezed between two narrowly-spaced shelves of rock. He’d already made it through when one of his men whispered, “Welbh?”

Welbh turned around, the tone of voice making his heart rate spike. He glanced through the shelves of rock and saw his men huddled on the other side, eyes wide, fur flattened. Welbh didn’t bother to ask what was wrong; he scanned the area he’d passed through in near-panic, trying desperately to find out what was waiting for them there, what threat he’d missed.

There was no threat. There were no other living creatures in the area.

But past his men, he saw the path they’d taken angling sharply upslope. Had they really moved so far downhill? He’d been so concentrated on the obstacles in his way and the occasional faint traces of their target that he hadn’t noticed the change in terrain. It was such a steep slope, too; from below, it looked less like a hillside and more like a cliff.

“Welbh,” one of his soldiers hissed again, “how are we going to get back up?”

Welbh’s eyes tracked up, past the shelves of rock he’d wiggled through, past his men. The obstacles they’d climbed over on the way down had made excellent handholds — but now, eyeing them from a distance, he felt his heart leap into his throat. They were _deliberate_ handholds, he realized now; each boulder or shelf or fallen tree was angled with precision so that it could be used as a crutch on the way down, but coming up … coming up, the east-facing sides of the boulders were smoothed and unclimbable, entirely different from the craggy surfaces that had helped Welbh on the way down.

The trees were still usable, and maybe an alien with a slightly different anatomy could climb them, but they were spaced so unevenly that someone of a Sai Duni’s height and build — with their joint structure — could hop down from one to the other, but could never hope to climb back up. Not without a rope to climb or someone aiding him from above. Welbh sucked in a breath through his teeth and whipped around, looking at the ravine he’d climbed into without a second thought.

It got narrower and narrower the farther you went; the stone walls got smoother, taller, more impossible to climb. Although he was the only one who’d squeezed through the shelves of rock, it didn’t make much of a difference. There was no escape to the west, and the walls of the gorge stretched up around them on all sides, towering over them from the north and south. They had two options: go backward up the cliff (impossible) or go forward, deeper east into the narrow ravine, where they couldn’t quite see who or what lay waiting for them ahead.

He’d led his men right into a trap.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sai Duni launch a rescue mission.

“ _Hopeless, ma’am_ ,” came Welbh’s voice over the communicator. His tone was only one step away from panic. “ _There’s no way out. If we keep going, we’re gonna be corralled with nowhere to go. Like Grall-bait._ ”

Uleppe’s face tightened as she listened to him. Her eyes flicked up only briefly, shifting across the clearing to Oss’ka. As if she were to blame for what her fellow Chiss had done.

“Is there any sign of the target there, Welbh?” Uleppe asked. She gestured to Fossk, who joined her silently, looking over her shoulder at the script display of Welbh’s words. 

“ _None that we can_ see _, ma’am,_ ” said Welbh. The emphasis was clear, almost accusatory.

“Can you smell him?” Uleppe pressed.

A slight pause. Peithh, standing not far from Oss’ka, was watching the whole scene with careful concentration on his face.

“ _No, ma’am_ ,” said Welbh eventually, relieved.

As if she expected this answer, Uleppe hit the mic button and started on her next round of questions right away. “You say you’re trapped, but you had to get down there somehow, Welbh,” she said; her tone was almost soothing rather than reprimanding. “Is there any way you can get back up?”

“ _Not without a rope, ma’am_ ,” said Welbh, his anxiety back full-force. “ _And even then, we’d need somebody to tie it up there for us, and we don’t have a rope. And_ —”

“We have a rope, Welbh,” said Uleppe, a bit of patient exasperation leaking into her voice. “We’ll send a squad down to get you out. Hang tight till then, and await further orders.”

She severed the communication halfway through Welbh’s response and glanced between Peithh and Fossk.

“Arkka Squadron,” said Peithh, turning on his heel to address his men. “We’re splitting up. Laerm, take ten of your strongest men with you and head east after Bayna Squadron. You heard the commander; make sure to bring plenty of rope.”

They stepped to it at once, with Laerm — who was almost as tall and thickly-muscled as Fossk — gesturing for a handful of soldiers to join him. Oss’ka watched them rifle through their packs for a moment, demanding extra rope from some of the smaller Sai Duni who were staying behind, and then she turned back to watch Commander Peithh. 

“They can’t smell him,” said Peithh thoughtfully. He cut his eyes at Oss’ka. “Is it possible for Chiss to repress their scent?”

She hesitated to answer. Repress their scent … sure, in a way. They could mask it with cologne or perfumes if they wanted, and all commoners wore deodorant as a matter of course. Wealthier families and the military could either repress their scent chemically or have those glands removed altogether in surgery.

But for someone stranded in the wilderness like Thrawn…

“I don’t think so, sir,” she told Peithh, ducking her head. “I’m sorry.”

Peithh didn’t respond for a moment. He looked to the east, nostrils flaring as he took a deep breath. “The scent is strong at the start of the path,” he murmured. “And Welbh must have followed it, to some degree, right until he reached the end. So why is it gone now?”

If he was waiting for a reply from Oss’ka, he wasn’t going to get one. She stared up at Peithh, watching him warily for any sign of the twitches that meant the Grysks were exerting control. She didn’t see any. When he glanced back down at her, his face was as placid and expressionless as a frozen sea.

“Because he’s gone,” he said absently. “He was close by earlier, when Welbh first scented him. And he stayed close while they followed his path. But why would he leave now, when he’s got them right where he wants them? Why not stay and pick them off?”

Across the clearing, Uleppe turned and met Peithh’s eyes with a frown. The same thought must have been churning around her head, too.

“Maybe there’s too many of us,” Oss’ka put forth hesitantly. “Maybe he knows he can’t kill us all, so he’s trying to separate us to make it easier.”

Peithh looked back down at her, his eyebrows raised. “Trapping the enemy,” he said approvingly. “Then, rather than waste time killing them once he has them pinned down, he leaves them and goes in search of more.”

Oss’ka nodded. When Peithh looked away again, this time examining his troops, she felt her gut begin to churn. If her guess was right, it meant she’d just helped the Sai Duni escape a Chiss without even thinking about it. She felt Peithh’s eyes return to her and tensed, her shoulders rising a few centimeters, her face turning hot with shame.

“It won’t do him any good,” said Peithh as an afterthought, looking back to the woods again. “Fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty, and all of Bayna Squadron will be released from his trap.”

His lips tightened as he stared into the woods to the east. His left eye twitched.

“And then their hunt can begin again.”

* * *

It was easy enough to follow Bayna Squadron’s path through the woods, thought Laerm, but of course they’d bumbled around so much that now it was impossible to tell whether they’d successfully followed the target’s path in the first place. Briefly, he considered rooting around a little — delaying the rescue just a tad to see if he could suss out the target’s path for himself. But there was no time, and besides, if Peithh had wanted him to take initiative here, he would have said so. 

He could see how they’d been corralled; the signs were subtle, but when he looked closely, he could make out a slight difference in color where the minerals in the dirt had been exposed to the sun here and there. Their target — the Chiss the Grysks wanted so badly — had shaved out a path in the woods, angling Bayna Squadron gradually downward to the cliff and simultaneously placing obstacles and digging holes to guide them straight to the edge. Once they’d got there, Bayna Squadron would have had no choice but to go down or to go straight back — and once they’d gone down, there was nowhere left to go at all.

“Halt,” said Laerm at the top of the cliff. He leaned out over the edge and craned his neck; below, he spotted the men of Bayna Squadron taking cover behind the moss-covered boulders in the ravine. A few glanced up, spotted him, and then continued their intense study of the gorge walls all around them. 

Good, Laerm thought. At least they hadn’t grown completely complacent while they waited. He raised his communicator to his lips and clicked it on.

“Arrka Squadron, operation rescue,” he said. “Where are you, Welbh, you useless little worm?”

There was a pause before Welbh responded.

“You don’t have to be an asshole about it, Laerm,” he said over comm. “You came down the exact same path.”

One of Laerm’s men scoffed behind him. He thumbed open his comm for a response, and—

“Just get the ropes so we can get out of here,” Welbh said, forestalling a comeback. Wise of him, Laerm thought. “The way this gorge is situated he could pick us off one by one whenever he wants.”

He was right about that. The ten men Laerm had chosen started digging through their backpacks for the ropes. They were securing one of them to a nearby tree when Laerm, examining the area, raised his communicator again. His eyes scanned over the high gorge walls, taking in every angle before he clicked the mic button on.

“Be a lot easier,” he said, “for him to pick you off when you’re all on the ropes.”

Behind him, his men stilled, their traditional Sai Duni rope ladder nowhere near complete. One of them picked nervously over the knots, his eyes on Laerm as he finished his knot automatically. It was a long moment before the comm clicked back on and Welbh’s voice, flat and full of static, said,

“What?”

“Down there you have cover,” said Laerm patiently. “Up here, _we_ have cover. But once your squadron gets on the ropes…”

“We can’t just _sit_ here, Laerm,” said Welbh, his voice going higher. “There’s not a single damn spot of good cover here, and you know it. All he has to do is switch positions up there and he can pick us off as easy as—”

From low in the ravine, echoing off the stone walls, an animal roared. The men behind Laerm froze again, each of them subconsciously hunching their shoulders and ducking their heads. Slowly, making sure to keep behind the trees, Laerm moved to the edge of the cliff again and looked down.

“Laerm?” came Welbh’s voice over comm, hushed and low.

Laerm scanned the valley. He could see almost half the members of Bayna Squadron — some of them were visible from his position, some of them weren’t — but he could see no sign of _any_ animal, let alone one large enough to make that sound. His eyes tracked from one boulder to the next, but the ravine was so full of them that it was impossible to tell where the beast might be hiding.

He glanced back at his men; still hunched for cover, they started working on the ladder again, faster than before. 

“We’ll get you out, buddy,” Laerm said over the comm, all sense of superiority gone. “We’ve got it tied to the tree already. The guys are working on the ladder now. Just hang tight and we’ll—”

From behind him — from the trees, back the way they came — the animal roared again.

“Laerm, _Laerm—_ ” said Welbh.

Laerm cut the communicator at once, turning to face the trees. He scanned the spaces between the leaves and underbrush, searching for something — anything — a flicker of movement, a shade of brown amidst all the green. 

Slowly, his men scrambled back on all fours, silently abandoning the ladder. They swung their weapons around on their chest straps and took up formation, five of them facing the ravine, five facing the forest with Laerm. He edged closer to the trees with his own weapon raised, stepping on the sides of his feet to avoid snapping twigs, to be as silent as possible.

And in the ravine, another animal roared.

And in the forest, the second animal roared back — right in front of Laerm, and then to the south, then to the north, until low growls and bloodthirsty roars were echoing all around him. He moved back quickly, grabbing the man nearest to him by the shoulder and pulling him back toward the edge as well; the others saw him move out of their peripheral vision and followed, until all of them were drawn tight beneath cover at the edge of the ravine.

“What do we do?” whispered the Sai Duni Laerm had grabbed.

He looked at the ladder, still tied to the tree but not yet finished. He glanced behind him at the steep path down into the gorge.

“Quickly,” he said, gesturing to the ladder with his weapon. Three of the men scrambled forward and grabbed the ropes, pulling them back to the edge. They set to work immediately, their weapons always within reach, their fingers moving fast over the knots. Above them, Laerm stood guard with his blaster out before him and scanned the trees.

And then, just as the animal roared again, he turned and spotted it — not in the ravine, not in the trees, but _across_ from them, on the far edge of the cliff. It was an enormous beast — at least two meters tall — and even from a distance he could smell its unwashed hide and the odor of spilled blood, of brains and guts and decay.

He raised his weapon and fired — and thank the gods, he fired true. The shot rang out above the heads of Bayna Squadron, a blast of energy zinging from one side of the ravine to the other. It speared the animal right in its center.

But the animal didn’t fall down and die. The animal didn’t wail in pain. The animal didn’t even bleed.

The animal _exploded_.

The far edge of the ravine crumbled beneath the blast; the animal’s corpse, or what remained of it, plummeted straight down, with the Sai Duni of Bayna Squadron scattering beneath to avoid being crushed. Laerm watched it fall, cataloguing the stiffness of its body, the strange fluttering of its singed fur, and—

“Sir?” one of his men said.

Laerm looked up and saw at once why his men were tugging at his sleeve. Across the ravine, a line of fire spread from the spot where the animal had once stood. The flames surged north and south, eating away at the foliage on all sides of the gorge.

As Laerm watched, the fire spread all the way to his side and flared up in the trees behind him in a neat, orderly line. He looked at his men. They didn’t look back at him. They stared at the wall of fire cutting off their escape.

Dully, Laerm clicked his communicator back on.

“Welbh?” he said.

* * *

It wasn’t an animal at all, Welbh insisted. It was a rock — or it was the splintered remains of a rock — and glued tightly to its surface was the freshly tanned hide of a massive animal that must have been the same size of a stalkpaw back home. Not that it mattered, Oss’ka supposed; the point was that Bayna Squadron was still trapped in the ravine, and now eleven men from Arkka Squadron were trapped with them.

And a rope ladder was no longer a viable solution to the trap. With a fire blazing all around the ravine, the only way to extract the Sai Duni would be via air.

“And we’re _absolutely_ not doing that,” said Commander Uleppe, her voice grim.

“I’m not arguing with you,” said Commander Peithh. He raised his communicator to his lips. “Puyessh, what have you found?”

Static crackled.

“I _t’s not an organic fire, sir, that’s for sure,_ ” said the scout over the comm. “ _Looks like the flames are emanating from some sort of sap-like substance spread in a ring all around the ravine. We’ve tried pouring water on it and we’ve tried dirt, but_ …”

“Laerm,” said Peithh, cutting Puyessh off. “You saw no sign of the Chiss?”

It was a moment before Laerm responded, his voice sounding a little less confident than Oss’ka was used to from him.

“ _No, sir. No Chiss._ ”

“But you distinctly heard an animal roar?” Peithh questioned.

Again, a slight pause. “ _Multiple roars, sir,_ ” said Laerm. “ _From all directions._ ”

Peithh slipped his finger off the mic button, nose wrinkling with thought. “Some sort of sound system, salvaged from the wreck?” he murmured. Clicking the button again, he said, “Puyessh—”

“ _No sign of electronics in the vicinity, sir,_ ” said Puyessh, as if he could somehow hear Peithh thinking aloud even without the mic on. “ _No wires, no speakers, nothing._ ”

“It’s a big forest,” said Peithh mildly.

“ _But we_ have _found something else, sir,_ ” said Puyessh. His voice sounded odd — strained rather than satisfied. “ _Footprints. Not many of them; they’re circled around each other in a fresh patch of upturned earth not far from the fire._ ”

Peithh opened his mouth to speak.

“ _And they’re small, sir,_ ” said Puyessh. “ _I’d guess they belong to someone who’s about one-point-two_ felluh _tall._ ”

Peithh shut his mouth at once. He snapped his communicator onto his wristband and pulled out the palm computer tucked into his belt. When Oss’ka edged closer to him, she saw him keying for what little data the Grysks had given them on Thrawn.

They both frowned at the same time.

“That’s nearly half a _felluh_ shorter than our target,” Peithh said. He raised his communicator to his lips. “Puyessh, keep an eye out. Pay attention to any peculiar or unfamiliar scents. Be sure to report back immediately if you come across anything strange.”

Disconnecting the communicator, he turned and met Oss’ka’s eyes first, then looked across to Uleppe.

“We miscalculated,” he said. Then, turning back to face the forest, he frowned and shook his head. “He’s not alone,” he said.

* * *

They wound through the forest almost silently after that. Oss’ka shadowed Uleppe, never straying far from the commander lest she miss something important or get left behind. The Sai Duni scouted out two well-trod paths that the Chiss — and whatever other survivors were out there — must have taken almost daily.

But after the trap Bayna Squadron walked into, they were all careful not to follow those routes. They beat their own trails through the woods, hacking through the underbrush far from the stamped-down dirt that Thrawn and his cronies must have tread. More than once, they came across something — a boulder, a downed tree, a tangle of thorns — that made Uleppe pause, her eyes sweeping suspiciously over the area. But it was impossible to tell what obstacles might have been put there deliberately to lead them astray, and which were simply the organic debris found in any woods.

Still, inexorably, it became clear to Oss’ka that they were being led — because no matter where they turned, no matter where they tried to go, they always ended up facing north.

Facing the wreck. 

Oss’ka could see it through the trees even now, sunlight gleaming off the dull metal of the collapsed hull. She started to turn away from it when Uleppe’s communicator buzzed and Peithh’s voice came through.

“Commander Uleppe,” he said, “do you find yourself feeling rather like an ordrat in a maze?”

Uleppe flicked her mic on with a scowl. “Affirmative, Commander,” she said. 

“Let’s say we cut this short, then,” said Peithh, his voice sharp. “The target and his men want to meet us at his ship. Alright, then — let’s meet him at his ship. Uleppe, instruct your men to fan out strictly to the east. Fossk, to the south. My men are already in position.”

Uleppe and Fossk acknowledged almost simultaneously. With a wave of her hand, Uleppe guided her men to the east; she joined them a moment later with Oss’ka at her side. It was harder work than it seemed — whether they were natural or not, the obstacles in the forest made movement to the east and west almost impossible, and definitely more work than it seemed worth.

But eventually, they got it done. Oss’ka could see the Sai Duni spread out fifteen meters from each other; those that were still within her sightline were vibrating with tension, their fingers clasped tightly around their weapons.

“In position, sir,” said Uleppe into her comm.

“Fossk?” Peithh prompted.

There was a pause; when Fossk’s voice came through, he sounded distorted and far away.

“In position,” he said, neglecting the ‘sir.’

“Second rank, hang back. First rank, move forward on my order,” said Peithh at once. “Three, two, one, _go_.”

As one, the Sai Duni moved. They advanced through the tree line, moving with uniform precision over any obstacles in their way. Oss’ka trailed behind, hurrying as fast as her short legs could carry her in an effort to keep up. She watched the Sai Duni break through the trees ahead of her, into the open clearing made by the ship when it wrecked.

And then, hesitating only a little, Oss’ka joined them. Around the ship, there were Sai Duni on all sides, every man on the alert. She could see Commander Peithh nearby, his eyes darting around as he joined his men.

Other than Oss’ka, there were no Chiss in sight.

“Waiting for the second rank, perhaps,” said Peithh, his voice magnified over comm. He glanced around the clearing once more and then lowered his communicator, speaking inaudibly to his men. After a moment, he signaled for them to stay where they were and made his way around the perimeter to Uleppe’s side at a leisurely pace.

“What now?” Uleppe said. 

A frown creased Peithh’s face. “He led us here for a reason,” he said, eyes darting around the clearing. “We’ve botched things for him, though. He wanted us all in the clearing at once so he could spring his trap. With a quarter of our men hanging back—”

 _Half,_ Oss’ka almost corrected him, before she realized Peithh had likely understated the number for a reason. She glanced around more cautiously this time, wondering what he saw that she didn't see. Or rather, _who_.

“—he can’t make his next move,” Peithh said. “And that means we have all the time we need to fan out and find him.”

He lifted his communicator to his lips again. “Fossk, your men will search the wreckage. Until the target decides to show himself, we—”

A squeal of static interrupted the channel. Peithh snapped his wrist away from his face, eyes twitching worse than Oss’ka had ever seen them before. Then, from deep in the woods behind them, there came a resounding crash.

The static stopped. Over comm, one of Arkka Squadron’s second rank said,

“Sir, we’ve got a situation back here.”

* * *

The tree fell down with an ear-shattering boom, and it did so for no reason. At least three men in the second rank could attest to that — it was a sturdy tree; it wasn’t dead; there was no wind; and it was thick around the middle — and yet, for no reason, with no external factors influencing it, it snapped.

And it didn’t _just_ snap, either. Later, Arkka Squadron would swear, it plummeted to the earth and almost squashed Mossil flat — and then, at the last second, just before it would have crushed Mossil, the tree stopped. Mid-air.

The tree _hovered_. 

“There must have been wires beneath to catch it,” Peithh would say, and Uleppe would back him up, claiming the men must have been so panicked that they just didn’t notice a monofilament net. But Mossil knew what he saw; the tree had almost crushed him, had been heading straight for his skull — and he’d been looking right at it, with sunlight filtering through the leaves all around him. If there had been a monofilament net between himself and the tree, he would have seen it. Hell, he probably would’ve got tangled in it himself. 

But he didn’t have time to explain these things to Peithh and Uleppe. After that, the attack began in earnest — and the Sai Duni most definitely were _not_ the attackers.

“Incoming—” said someone from Canna Squadron, their voice too staticky to make out. Deep in the trees around the wrecked ship, Mossil heard something hefty crash against wood, heard the splintering of another tree. He glanced left, saw Peithh on the perimeter, trying to stop men from the second ranks who were pouring into the clearing.

“Do _not_ retreat!” Peithh was shouting, his voice hoarse from repeating the command. He grabbed uselessly at every man who ran past him, struggling to get a grip on their vests and stop them as they raced by. Each Sai Duni shook him off, probably not even noticing who was grabbing them. 

For a moment, Peithh stopped, his arms hanging at his sides, and simply let his men run by. Even from a distance, Mossil could see Peithh’s eyes twitching — and this, combined with the crashing noises all around him in the woods, was enough to make him edge away. He skirted the perimeter of the wreck, stepping carefully over debris, and made his way to the hangar bay, out of Peithh’s sight.

He came up short as another crash sounded through the woods, this one followed by a howl of pain. Before him, crouched behind a haphazard pile of durasteel scrap, were Commander Uleppe and the Chiss girl, Oss’ka. Mossil glanced around quickly, making sure the coast was clear, and darted across the clearing to join them.

“—not natural,” Uleppe was saying. Oss’ka’s face was pinched, her lips tight. She wouldn’t make eye contact with Uleppe; perhaps she was listening to something she didn’t want to hear.

“What’s not natural?” Mossil asked, jumping on the two-word phrase. He thought of the hovering tree again, the way it had stopped itself mid-air just before crushing him, and his heart leapt in his throat.

“This debris,” Uleppe told him, eyes narrowing. She glanced around at the scraps all around them, not seeming to notice the way Mossil’s face fell. “Look at it. Look at it _closely_.” 

Distractedly, Mossil followed her command. He listened with half an ear to the sounds of chaos all around him and tried to force himself to focus on the durasteel. All around this side of the wreck, there were scraps of damaged fighters and loadlifters scattered around.

“What about it, ma’am?” he asked.

The look Uleppe gave him was sharp, her eyes piercing right into him. Beside her, Oss’ka ducked her head, a miserable frown lining her eyes.

“Could _you_ lift that fighter out of the hangar doors?” she asked. She pointed behind her, to the twisted wreckage of a black ship that must have weighed twenty times as much as any of them. Mossil stared at it, his mouth dry, and then back up to the hangar doors. With the way this ship was angled, you couldn’t just push wreckage out; you had to _lift_ it, and to lift something twenty times heavier than the average person…

“A pulley system?” he said weakly, remembering the tree.

“Hooked to what?” Uleppe countered. She grabbed his face and angled his head toward the hangar doors. “What is there to hook a pulley system to, Mossil? And where _is_ the pulley system? Do you see it anywhere around here? Why would he take so much time to install one, only to take it away? Where else could he possibly need a pulley system on Sera Dun?”

Mossil’s eyes darted over the hangar doors. The edges were warped from impact and the resulting heat of a fire — too twisted to install anything at all. He looked back at the debris scattered all around the clearing, and then to the tree line, where boulders and trunks and all manner of things were rocketing through the air after the fleeing Sai Duni, seemingly propelled by nothing but sheer will.

Gradually, he dragged his gaze back — but not to Uleppe.

To Oss’ka, the little girl who could see into the future. 

And she wouldn’t meet his gaze. 

“You think it’s someone like the Navigator we had on the mission to Paddev?” he asked, turning to Uleppe. Her eyes narrowed — remembered the Void Guide who had so casually levitated a cup of caf toward the garbage chute when he thought no one was looking. Mossil hadn’t seen that incident — one of Welbh’s men had — but he’d heard all about it, and he hadn’t forgotten it since. He glanced at Oss’ka again, wondering not for the first time what abilities she was hiding from them. What she was keeping secret.

At the edge of the woods, another rank of men broke past Commander Peithh, knocking him to the ground. He rolled on his side, protecting his head until the stampede had passed. When he uncurled from the fetal position and raised his head, everyone in the clearing was quiet.

The Sai Duni huddled against the wreck of the Chimaera. Alone among the crowd, Peithh lay right next to the trees. He stood slowly, carefully. His posture and his expression betrayed no fear, but across from him, not even ten meters away—

Across from him was a human, his face dark and lined with fading scars, his hand raised. A lightweight wooden rack rested on his shoulders, with a reptilian creature attached to it. It was like the drawings Mossil’s grandfather used to make, before the Grysks broke him. The human had no weapons that Mossil could see, yet no one made a move to take him down. He made eye contact with Commander Peithh, challenging him silently, neither of them moving a muscle.

Gleaming around the human’s neck was a tarnished pendant. It shone a silver-blue in the sun. Mossil eyed it, unsure what he was seeing, and was about to move on when he heard Oss’ka take a sharp breath. He looked at her, trying to read her face, and she looked back at him in fear.

“He tricked us,” she breathed. 

Mossil looked at the human again, uncomprehending.

“That’s the wayfinder we tracked here,” Oss’ka said, her voice little more than a whimper. “It’s a Chiss memento. I felt it when we heard the signal — I thought it was Thrawn. But if _he_ has it…”

Mossil watched the human and Peithh face off.

“If _he_ has it,” Oss’ka whispered, “then Thrawn has to be dead. He’d never give it up otherwise. Nobody would.”

Beside Mossil, Uleppe’s fingers flexed, straying quietly to her weapon. Across the clearing, Mossil could see Peithh’s eyes twitching in an otherwise calm face.

Peithh went for his gun.

“No!” Oss’ka screamed, lunging forward without warning. Mossil’s hand snapped out by reflex, catching her by the upper arm before she could run away. He didn’t know who she was running forward to help — her commander or the alien facing him — but he stopped her anyway, without hesitating to think. Her cry broke the silence; suddenly the Sai Duni were moving again, pulling their weapons, surging forward, hiding, attacking, retreating—

And across the clearing, even as Mossil watched, the human flicked his wrist and Commander Peithh slammed fifteen meters back against the wrecked ship’s hull, landing like a rag doll.

“No!” Oss’ka screamed again as the Sai Duni advanced. Mossil stayed where he was, his legs locked, his fingers tight around Oss’ka’s arm. He watched as Commander Uleppe charged forward and, just like Peithh, was thrown back by some invisible force. 

“No,” Oss’ka cried, her voice straining, “to the woods! To the woods! There’s a safe spot in the woods!”

A Sai Duni soldier hit the durasteel hull not far from Mossil, and the resulting flinch seemed to wake him up. He felt adrenaline spike in him and knew he could move his legs again, but he only tightened his grip on Oss’ka’s arm, spinning her around violently to look him in the eye.

“What do you mean, there’s a safe spot in the woods?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard over the chaos all around them. 

Eyes wide, Oss’ka shook her head. “It’s — I don’t know, exactly, I just _felt_ it. There’s a spot over there that I can’t see. It’s like the Sight just doesn’t exist there.”

“The Sight doesn’t _exist_?” Mossil repeated. The gears turned in his mind; he looked at Peithh, struggling to stand on a broken leg, and Uleppe, unconscious on the ground. He couldn’t find any other leadership anywhere; Fossk was nowhere to be seen. “You mean there’s something blocking it?”

“Maybe,” Oss’ka said. Her lips were trembling and she bit them, trying to make them stop. “Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t see _him_ coming, either. But if I can’t see it, maybe he can’t…”

Another Sai Duni fell nearby, this one sliding on his back in the grass. Keeping his grip on Oss’ka, Mossil bent over the soldier, shaking him back to his senses.

“The woods,” he said urgently. “Oss’ka says there’s a safe spot in the woods. He can’t use his powers there.”

The soldier stared up at him blearily.

“ _Move!_ ” Mossil bellowed, pushing him to his feet. This time, the soldier reacted, responding automatically to the tone of command. If he could hear the tone of panic underneath it all, he didn’t show it. “ _Where_ , Oss’ka?” Mossil demanded almost hysterically, one hand clenched in the soldier’s vest.

“The north,” Oss’ka said, stumbling over the words. Fear had turned her almost immobile; she couldn’t take her eyes off Mossil. She was looking at him, he thought, the same way the Sai Duni looked at the human on the edge of the woods.

Well, if that was what it took to save this mission, so be it.

“To the woods!” Mossil roared, releasing the soldier before him. He pointed violently to the north. “All men to me! To the woods!”


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some are lost and some survive.

Uleppe woke slowly to a sensation she’d never felt before, like invisible fingers were poking through her mind. She kept her eyes closed and her breathing deep and even, listening for any sign of the enemy before she revealed she was awake. Beside her, she could feel something warm and soft — the arm of a Sai Duni, though she couldn’t tell who. And on her other side—

“I know you’re not unconscious anymore,” a voice said.

Uleppe frowned; the pronunciation was clumsy, the words of a distant trade language mangled in the human’s tongue. But the words were aimed at her, so there was no point in pretending anymore. She cracked her eyes open, giving herself time to adjust to the light, and sat up.

Her hands were tied behind her back. Beside her sat Commander Peithh, his face pinched but stoic, his leg bent at an angle so unnatural it could only mean he’d broken a bone. His eyes cut Uleppe’s way with an intensity in them that suggested he was trying to communicate with her without using words. But whatever he was trying to tell her, she didn’t—

“So what if I did?” asked the human.

Peithh looked away from Uleppe at once. The human’s face was pinched, his skin pale from strain. The rack on his shoulders seemed to weigh him down; a weakness she could exploit, Uleppe thought, as soon as she got these ropes off her hands and feet. But—

“It’s not as heavy as it looks,” the human said, his eyes shifting to Uleppe. “And even through this … _corruption_ in your head, you wouldn’t leave an injured friend behind.” He gestured at Peithh as he said it, then let his hand fall, eyes narrowing. “At least, not for me. I’m not your life-goal, am I?”

He took a deep breath, not seeming to notice or care about the way Uleppe and Peithh both froze at those words. She felt her nose twitching uncontrollably; when she looked sideways, Peithh’s head was bowed so that his eyes were hidden behind his bent knee. Ashamed of the response, Uleppe thought. He didn’t want the enemy — or their rival hunter, or whoever this human was — to see. 

Priorities, she told herself. She had to escape her bonds first. To do that, the human needed to be distracted. Peithh could handle that much; he would recognize that he was injured and apply his mind to the most applicable task; he’d know without her telling him that he had to be the distraction. If he could do that without getting killed, then her next priority, of course, would be to get him out of harm’s way.

Then capture or kill the human, however possible.

And then find Thrawn.

Her thoughts wrenched inexorably back to the Chiss target, like a black rot creeping through her brain and shunting her neural pathways wherever the Grysks wanted them to go. It was almost impossible to think like this, with the life-goal and the Grysks’ directives pressing up against the coils of her brain. She grit her teeth, lowered her head through the pain, tried to think.

“I got a better idea,” the human said with a heavy high. Uleppe squinted up at him and watched as he shrugged out of the biosupport rack. He walked back fifteen meters with it, rested it against a tree, and returned to stand directly before him.

“How about this for your first priority, Uleppe?” he said. He raised his hands, rolled his shoulders, and closed his eyes. “Brace yourself,” he advised her. “You too, Peithh.

“This is gonna hurt.”

* * *

The men were following him, Mossil thought. He couldn’t be sure if he felt more panic or elation at the idea. The men were following _him_. Not Uleppe, not Peithh, not Fossk. After too many battles to count, Mossil was the one in charge.

And he wasn’t sure he liked it.

“Keep moving!” he barked, waving the men past him through the trees. His voice sounded weak and uninspiring, even to his own ears, but no one else attempted to take the lead. Oss’ka stood at his elbow, her face pinched as she watched the Sai Duni hurry by. She jerked whenever one of them passed too close to her, trying unsuccessfully to repress each flinch. 

What had happened, Mossil wondered, to erode her trust in the Sai Duni so quickly? He glanced down at her, still motioning his men on. She’d never been subjected to the same treatment the Sai Duni received from the Grysks. They said it was impossible to win loyalty from a Navigator; they couldn’t be persuaded the same way other people could. So in a way, she’d had a more comfortable life than any of them — should have been _grateful_ to them, even — but instead, her loyalties were changing right here on the battlefield, and the transformation was written across her face plain as day.

She’d have to die, then, he decided. His chest ached at the idea, but that only seemed to cement his resolve. He could feel the resolution hardening in his brain against his will, taking up his attention and pushing all other objectives to the side. It formed a hard not in his head, just slightly smaller than his life-goal. Not yet, he knew, but later, when her usefulness to them was done — she would have to die. It was inevitable.

He took a deep breath.

They could always find more Navigators, he told himself, but it didn’t comfort him in the slightest. He looked down at her surreptitiously, remembering the time she’d brought him tea after he was injured on a mission, and looked away again. They were only a few years apart in age. In another world, he might have been friends with her.

But the Sai Duni served the Grysks now, and if they were told to kill their friends…

“How much farther, Oss’ka?” Mossil asked.

She stared at the men running by and didn’t answer right away, shaking her head. 

“Maybe a kilometer,” she said, her skin pale. “Maybe more.”

“And the vector?” asked Mossil, putting a little more iron into his voice, the way he’d seen Fossk handle first-time fighters before. Oss’ka flinched, turning away from him — and suddenly he felt very small.

“Same vector,” she said tightly, facing north. “That way.”

She raised her finger and pointed, then let her hand fall without even glancing his way. As if she could feel his eyes on her, she said, “If you don’t believe me, let me lead the way.”

“And risk losing the only person here who can see into the future?” Mossil said. He waved the last few stragglers through and then started after them, relieved when Oss’ka fell into step without being told. He hadn’t liked grabbing her the way he did earlier, when she’d tried to run to Commander Peithh. To help him or hurt him, he still wasn’t sure, but grabbing her like that — it hadn’t felt organic; he hadn’t felt like himself. It wasn’t right.

 _But it was necessary,_ said a dark voice in his head, _and you’ll do it again._

He took a deep breath. Nose twitching, he put his hand on Oss’ka shoulder and urged her forward. With his other hand, he touched the burnt-out communicator in his pocket almost like it was a talisman, letting the smooth texture of the melted casing distract him. It still had the Chiss target’s scent on it, underneath the smell of soot and smoke; it was like his own little good luck charm — his own wayfinder, leading him to the target.

There was a reason Peithh had tossed it to _him_ , and not to Tregh, he thought. Whether he’d done it consciously or not, Peithh had chosen Mossil with that gesture, had granted him the honor of a successful mission in the eyes of the Grysks. He took another deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling calmer.

“Let’s go,” he said. 

She walked five steps ahead of him, her shoulders hunched, deliberately keeping her eyes on the ground. 

“Keep moving north!” Mossil shouted to the men ahead of them. He kept his hand on his weapon, eyes tracking over the trees all around them. For now, the men were listening to him, maybe only because Peithh and Uleppe were nowhere to be seen. But Mossil’s plan of action ended the moment they reached their destination; he had no idea what they would do after that, and thinking it through…

_Objective: Capture the Chiss._

Okay, thought Mossil with a grimace, but how? Oss’ka didn’t even think the Chiss was still alive, and out of all them here, she’d know. So what did they do if that was the case? How did they prove he was dead? Did they search the entire planet looking for his body? Would they dig up the mass grave near the wrecked ship, searching for minute differences in the remains to figure out which one was him?

The other option — go back to the flagship — wasn’t really an option at all. Either they found the Chiss (alive, dead, whatever) or they died here. Either they obeyed the Grysks’ objective or they died. The only choice Mossil had before him was whether they died _here_ , endlessly searching for the Chiss’s body, or aboard the flagship at the hands of the Grysks.

Ahead of him, Oss’ka stepped carefully forward, always keeping her eyes on the ground. It didn’t seem to matter to her that they were walking in the wake of dozens of Sai Duni soldiers; she acted as if every step could trigger an unseen trap. She was intelligent, Mossil thought. His nose twitched again; the ache in his heart was back. She was intelligent, and that was part of the problem. He couldn’t guarantee that she wasn’t already plotting a betrayal, but at the same time, he couldn’t afford to take preemptive action. She was the only one who could sense the safe spot in the woods — and, if he was still alive, possibly the Chiss target as well.

He followed her, matching every step of hers with one of his own. Gradually, when he looked ahead of them through the trees, he realized he could make out the silhouettes of Sai Duni soldiers waiting for them up ahead. A few meters closer and he realized there was something else in the woods, too, a shadow lurking behind his men — not a person this time, but a sprawling stone ruin, the remains of what must have once been a fortress or a temple.

He lowered his weapon, keeping it pointed away from the Sai Duni before him, and quickened his pace a little to join them.

“You secured the perimeter?” he asked the first man he saw. The soldier gave him a confused look and a distracted nod, as if he didn’t understand the question — or more likely, didn’t understand why Mossil specifically was questioning him. Not good, Mossil thought; they wouldn’t have questioned it if Peithh asked them that. Already, his moment of leadership — seized during the attack at the clearing — was starting to fade.

He glanced around; only a handful of the soldiers were watching him, waiting for him to take charge. Grimacing, he found Oss’ka — already drifting away from him — and shoved her toward the center of the ruins.

“Watch her,” he barked to the Sai Duni. “Make sure she doesn’t escape.”

The look Oss’ka shot him was wide-eyed, hurt, and confused; Mossil turned away from it at once, refusing to look into her eyes. He slipped his hand into his pocket and touched the communicator again.

“Where’s Uleppe?” someone asked.

Mossil’s expression darkened. The question wasn’t aimed at him specifically, but he raised his voice to answer it. “She’s back at the clearing,” he said. “Unconscious or dead. Same for Peithh.” Then, taking a gamble, he added, “They left me in charge.”

Oss’ka didn’t contradict him, but the Sai Duni met his announcement with a doubtful silence. He stalked to the entrance of the ruins, where most of the men were gathered, and scowled at anyone who met his eyes. 

“We need to come up with a plan,” he said, his voice ringing out against the stone walls. “Uleppe and Peithh are out of commission. Fossk, too. It’s up to us to neutralize the target.”

“ _Capture_ the target,” one of the soldiers muttered.

“Capture, neutralize, find his body — whatever it takes to get off this planet,” Mossil said, some of his impatience leaking through. “Or did you all just want to stand here like children waiting for the human survivors to track us down?”

The younger Sai Duni looked back at him then, anxiety lining their faces. The older Sai Duni, grey-furred and battle-scarred, didn’t even glance his way. They gazed out into the forest, scanning the trees. 

_Unacceptable,_ Mossil thought. If he wanted to mobilize the younger soldiers, he needed the old-timers on his side. He marched deliberately to the low stone wall where the majority of them were standing guard. Planting his feet, he looked at each of them in turn.

“We have a life-goal,” he said. “The Grysks won’t let us leave here alive unless we accomplish it. Are you going to sit here doing nothing or are you going to help us come up with a plan?”

One by one, they looked his way, their faces twitching as the painful sting of corruption lanced through their brains. By invoking the life-goal, he’d jump-started the process and got them back on track.

“Help you,” one of the old-timers muttered.

The others nodded or said nothing. None of them directly negated what the first soldier said. Mossil glanced past them, to the spot deep in the ruins where Oss’ka was watching him, her pale face standing out amongst the crowd.

“Good,” he said. He took a deep breath, steadied his nerves. Tried to project a confidence he didn’t truly feel. “Then here’s our first step.”

All eyes turned to him. He had the full attention of the Sai Duni now. He was their leader.

And he had just opened his mouth to speak when the communicator inside his pocket blinked into life and, with a quiet beep that nobody but Mossil heard, exploded.

* * *

The human’s mind seared through hers once again, rocketing down a line of memories to find the nexus of her brain — the pulsing heartbeat that was the Grysks’ command. Her life-goal. 

Kill the Chiss or die trying.

She felt cold, invisible fingers press against this point, feeling it out, learning the parameters. When she opened her eyes, snout twitching so uncontrollably that it made her grimace, she saw Commander Peithh hunched over beside her with his face pressed against his knees. He was twitching, too, water leaking with abandon from his rolled-back, white eyes.

Capture the Chiss. Kill the Chiss.

Obey or die.

Her heart thudded. Even if they _wanted_ to resist, they didn’t have the option. Her parents had survived the Grysk invasion years ago by killing their friends, their neighbors. They’d submitted to the life-goal forced on them and afterward, they’d been shells; broken husks. Shame rolled in her gut at the thought of it — the people she’d grown up adoring, both of them turned into something cold, unrecognizable. 

Those invisible fingers pressed against her life-goal so insistently that Uleppe saw stars. She felt the pressure lighten for a moment; the nexus seemed to shrink minutely, to fade ever so slightly away.

When she looked up, the human’s face was working. His throat was tight, his posture strained. He looked her in the eyes. If she failed here … if she did not meet her goal, who would she be?

A soldier all her life, and _now_ she abandons ship? Unlikely.

It was untenable to even think about. Even without the Grysks’ influence, it went against the grain of her soul.

And yet the human continued to meet her eyes, and she saw no judgment or revulsion there. He saw her every shameful thought of retreat, of survival, of relief, of concern for Peithh and for her men, of every horrible disobedience or revolt she’d ever considered before the Grysk influence wrenched her mind away — and despite seeing, his face only softened.

He lowered his hand. Abruptly, the pressure inside Uleppe’s mind went away. She pitched forward, gasping for air, and was only barely cognizant of the human kneeling next to her.

Of his hands on her temples.

Of the healing, soothing sense of calm that trickled through her brain.

Of the life-goal getting smaller, getting quieter, as every second ticked by.

She looked up and met the human’s eyes, saw a sad smile circling his lips as he healed the wound in her brain.

“It’s okay to survive,” the human told her. 

* * *

The explosion didn’t just kill Mossil. When the dust cleared, Oss’ka was flat against the ground with her hands over her head and a heavy weight on her back, but even she could see the splintered remains of the Sai Duni’s oldest and most experienced soldiers scattered around the ruins, mixed in among the stones.

A wall crumbled, landing in the smoldering grass. Flames licked at the underbrush, but the Sai Duni didn’t move; they stayed right where they were, no matter how close they had been to the blast, their faces tight. They looked younger now, to Oss’ka, than they had ever looked before.

Was it the life-goal? she wondered. Or was it fear that kept them rooted to the spot? The Sai Duni scanned the ground around them, refusing to move. Searching for mines, she realized with a cold spike of fear. That must have been what killed Mossil. How had they all walked so carelessly around the ruins without triggering one before now? Why had it been Mossil and Mossil alone who stepped into the trap?

She shifted beneath the weight on her back — heavy but not oppressive — and then twisted, getting her hands against it, ready to push whatever obstacle had fallen on her back off again. 

Too late, she registered the feeling of cloth and cool skin beneath her hands. She froze, the change sharp in its lack of motion, and a hand clamped down over her mouth, stifling any sound of surprise she might have made.

She looked up, directly into the red eyes of a Chiss. 

He jerked his chin to the north and mouthed the word “ _come_ ” in Cheunh. When he rolled back on his heels, silently removing his hand from her mouth, Oss’ka didn’t say a word. She glanced back at the Sai Duni, still obscured by smoke and flames behind her, and crawled to her feet.

She followed the Chiss, hunched over to avoid being seen, straight out of the ruins.

“Fear will keep them trapped only so long,” he said matter-of-factly when they reached the woods. He brushed away a pile of leaves at the base of a tree with his hands, revealing a handmade wooden crate. Economically, he removed two weapons — blasters, to match the one already strapped to his belt — and straightened to face Oss’ka. 

He met her eyes steadily, his posture confident and relaxed. 

“How long have you been with the Grysks?” he asked.

Oss’ka started to shiver, a belated response to the explosion. Mossil. He’d killed _Mossil_ — and he’d trapped Welbh, the same Sai Duni who had once brought her back a wooden doll when he returned from his first mission.

“Four years,” she said, rubbing her arms, fighting a sudden chill.

“And with these aliens, specifically?” Thrawn asked, not ungently.

“The Sai Duni,” Oss’ka told him, hesitating. “Four years.” She found her eyes drawn back incessantly to his blasters. “They use other Navigators, too,” she said. “But…”

“But primarily you,” Thrawn finished for her. His eyes tracked over her face, studying her. Then, kneeling before her — an act so surprising that Oss’ka took an involuntary step back — he looked up into her eyes and said softly, “I don’t have much time, Navigator. What is your name?”

It came out trembling, like a question. “Oss’ka.”

“Oss’ka.” He tried the name out, lips pressing into a thin line. “My name is Thrawn,” he said. “How do you think of these Sai Duni, Oss’ka? Are they your captors or your friends?”

Staring down at him, Oss’ka felt something quaking in her chest. She thought of Peithh, who frightened her when his eyes twitched, but who was always patient with her, who spoke to her with respect like she was intelligent and capable, not just a child to be ordered around. She thought of Uleppe, who’d shielded her when the human in the woods attacked. She thought of the young soldiers who had taken the time to chat with her between missions, who brought her gifts, who ate with her in the mess so she wouldn’t be lonely and asked to hear stories about her home. Even Welbh’s older brother, Laerm, who acted so harsh with the other men, was always kind to her.

Captors or friends. If those were her only two options…

“Friends,” she whispered, voice broken, and she felt hot, shameful tears roll down her cheeks. She closed her eyes, refusing to look Thrawn in the face. After a long moment, gently, he grabbed her hand and led it to his blaster.

“Look,” he ordered.

She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head. Then, with a trembling breath — before he could admonish her or move away in disappointment — she forced herself to open them. Thrawn led her fingers to a switch on the barrel of the blaster, a small white button with strange symbols stamped on each side. When he pressed his thumb against it, the button slid forward.

“This is a language called Basic,” Thrawn told her, tracing the word on top of the button. “It means ‘kill.”

Then, watching her face closely, he slid the button back down with a click and traced the other word on the barrel. 

“And this one says ‘stun.’”

He left the button where it was. He waited to see if she understood. Oss’ka didn’t nod her head or respond, but he seemed satisfied. He stood, the blaster still in his hand, and looked down at her.

“I can make no promises,” he told her gravely. “But I will endeavor not to harm your friends.”

And he left her there, safe but sobbing quietly to herself, in the woods.

* * *

Laerm was the last man down into the ravine, his fur singed by the fire but otherwise unharmed. He made his way over to Welbh silently, clicking his communicator on and off, trying and failing to get in contact with command. As he wove through the boulders, he kept an eye on the fires raging up above them, waiting for any further sign of attack.

He found Welbh deeper in the ravine, tucked into a crag in the rocks and looking half-dead. He shivered violently, eyes set on nothing.

Not injured, Laerm knew. But it wouldn’t be long before he was. Everyone in the ravine was feeling it now, a sense of uselessness creeping in on them the longer they were stuck down here — out of the fight, and failing to complete their life-goal. 

He squeezed into the space next to Welbh, who didn’t so much as glance his way.

“I can’t get into contact with Peithh or Uleppe,” Laerm said, hoping to get a reaction. Welbh’s jaw was clenched, his eyes set on the mossy rocks across the way. He twitched when Laerm’s shoulder touched his, but otherwise didn’t react. 

“Did you hear me?” Laerm asked. He brought the communicator up, dangled it in front of Welbh’s eyes. 

“Try Fossk,” Welbh said through gritted teeth. His eyes didn’t focus on the communicator, and after a moment, Laerm lowered it again, automatically calling Peithh the same way he had been doing for the past hour.

“I don’t have Fossk’s call sign,” he muttered.

Wordlessly, Welbh handed Laerm his own communicator. Laerm turned it over in his palm, hesitated, thought it through. Finally, reluctantly, he hit the button.

“ _Fossk_ ,” came Fossk’s voice at once, clipped but calm. Relief washed over Laerm like a tidal wave. He sank back against the ravine wall and clapped Welbh on the shoulder in a reflexive show of joy. “ _Who is this?_ ” Fossil asked. “ _Peithh? Uleppe?_ ”

So Fossk wasn’t with the other commanders? Frowning, Laerm hit his mic and held the communicator to his lips.

“It’s Laerm of Arkka Squadron,” he said. “I’m with Welbh, leader of Bayna Squadron. We’re in the ravine, sir.”

Fossk didn’t respond. Laerm gave him a moment and, when he was relatively certain Fossk wasn’t going to speak, went on.

“We’ve been trying to reach our commanders but we can’t get through,” said Laerm. “We need an update on the situation up there. Things are—”

He looked at Welbh, shivering helplessly, his eyes unfocused and bloodshot. Lowering his voice, turning his head so he wouldn’t be distracted by concern, Laerm said, “Things are getting bad here, sir. Have you found the Chiss yet?”

He waited, listening for an answer with one hand on Welbh’s shoulder to keep him still. The static of an open channel dragged out for far too long.

And then, without answering any of Laerm’s questions, Fossk said, “ _The Chiss is dead,_ ” and cut the line.

* * *

There was no way for Oss’ka to know what happened in the ruins, but she could hear the blaster shots even from a distance — and sometimes, when she forced herself to look south, she could see the blue bolts of light flashing through the trees. She closed her eyes and held her head in her hands, struggling to open herself up to the Sight the way she always had in the past — to get a glimpse of what awaited her, or who would win — but she saw nothing. 

Where the Sight had been, there was nothing now but a terrible, gaping void.

And she had no idea if Thrawn would return for her. She’d climbed up into a nearby tree shortly after he left, hiding herself in the branches. If he came back, he’d see her right away — he’d see her heat signature through the trees — but she had her fingers crossed that nobody else would. If a Sai Duni came, she’d reveal herself to him at once. What she was really worried about — the nagging thought that wouldn’t leave her alone — was the unknown number of humans waiting in the woods.

She’d allied herself with the wrong person, she suspected. Thrawn was good, she’d give him that — somehow he’d known about the Sai Duni and their deference toward leadership and age, and he’d managed to dislocate the younger soldiers and incapacitate the older ones entirely. But it wasn’t just the Sai Duni hunting him. Presumably, the humans were, too.

She turned this idea over in her head, examining it from all angles. Who was it who’d voiced that idea first? Commander Peithh? Commander Uleppe? Or was it Mossil? Someone among the Sai Duni had seen the human boy in the woods and assumed he was hostile, not just to them, but to Thrawn as well. Why? Because he was a different species? Or had _she_ been the one to come up with that idea and mistakenly spread it around, when she’d seen the wayfinder around the human’s neck and jumped to the wrong conclusion?

It was no good to make a battle plan based on assumptions. She was a different species from the Sai Duni, and she wasn’t hostile to _them_. Besides, there had been only one shipwreck — at least, only one that she’d seen so far. If Thrawn had crashed here with the humans … well, it seemed unlikely to her that he’d be flying through space with anyone he didn’t consider an ally. So maybe the humans _were_ on his side, she decided.

But that didn’t mean they were on _her_ side. She turned her head to the south as the noises there started to die down; she could see no more blasterfire through the trees. 

It was only a few minutes more before Thrawn came back to her. He walked right up to the tree and held his hand out to her, silently offering her help. Oss’ka didn’t move.

“Come,” he said softly. “We don’t have much time. We must return to the _Chimaera_.”

There was blood on his cheek. She eyed it, refusing to take his hand, and after a moment he seemed to understand her concerns. He wiped the blood away and laid his fingers flat beneath his cheekbone, tugging downward on his own skin. A gash gaped open when he did so, the skin parting, more blood welling up.

“My blood, see?” he said. “Not theirs.”

She scanned the rest of his body. There were plasma burns on his fingers and knuckles, left behind from the sheer number of shots he’d fired in a row. She could see a knife tucked into his belt, but it seemed unused. This time, when he held his hand out to her, she refused to take it only because she didn’t want to cause him pain when she put her weight on him.

She climbed down on her own and jumped the last meter, landing not far from him in the grass. He looked at her appraisingly, then back to the ruins. 

“Would you like to see them?” he asked.

Oss’ka didn’t nod her head right away. She bit her lip, looked up at him in concern. “You said we don’t have much time,” she reminded him.

“We have time for this,” he assured her. “Come.”

He set off without waiting to see if she would follow, and of course Oss’ka did. She jogged to catch up with him and then fell into step, silently wringing her hands. 

They passed the ruins; he didn’t allow her to linger. The fire from the explosion that killed Mossil had been extinguished. The rest of the Sai Duni lay inside, looking almost dead. Their eyes were closed; their hands and feet had been tied. Their weapons, though, had not been stripped away. Oss’ka’s brow furrowed, but Thrawn was already moving on, and she had to hurry to catch up again.

“I thought you’d kill them, anyway,” she confessed, refusing to meet his eyes. He looked down at her briefly, and she was sure she knew how he’d respond. She remembered the grown-ups back home and how they’d talked to her and could already hear him saying, _Of course I wouldn’t, Oss’ka. I promised, and I never break my promises._

Her caregiver had said similar things before selling her to the Grysks. 

But after a long moment of silence, Thrawn only said, “I did kill some of them, Oss’ka. I avoided it when possible.”

Oss’ka looked at him sharply. He kept his head high, his eyes not on the treacherous ground beneath his feet but on the horizon. Somehow, he managed not to stumble over the undergrowth.

“Because I asked you to?” she asked, trying to gauge how honest he would be with her.

“Because I cannot fly a ship as large as theirs on my own,” Thrawn replied. He looked down at her, again favoring her with an appraising look. “The smaller ships are not equipped with hyperdrives. The large ship cannot be manned by only three people, even when two of them are sky-walkers.”

A thrill went through her at that, and she couldn’t even be sure which piece of information caused it. _Three people_ — he was counting her in that, and presumably he was counting the human she’d seen in the clearing. He’d been moving objects around somehow, making them float in the air — not a talent she’d ever seen in a Chiss sky-walker, but it seemed reasonable that other species might have other abilities. But was Thrawn implying there were no other humans in the forest?

She glanced at him again, studying him, and decided at once that it was best not to put these thoughts into words. Instead, she focused on the first and most shocking aspect of his answer.

“You think the Sai Duni will help you fly their ship?” she asked.

He didn’t glance her way. “Yes,” he said, “I do.”

“They won’t,” Oss’ka told him. She felt something strange twisting in her gut — pity, because he didn’t know, and disappointment because he’d seemed for a moment like he might actually be smart enough to get them out of this mess. “They’ve been taken over. By the Grysks. Do you know who the Grysks are?”

“I do,” said Thrawn, his voice grim. “And I am aware. For some of them, I suspect that will be an issue.”

“For _some_ of them?” Oss’ka asked.

Finally, he looked at her. His face was impossible to read. Without slowing his pace at all, he leaned over so that she could see his eyes better and said, almost conspiratorially, “Do you know what the Sai Duni leadership is doing at the moment, Oss’ka?”

She furrowed his eyebrows at him. “No.”

He straightened up again with a faint smile. “They’re breaking,” he said. “And soon, the rest of the Sai Duni will be, too.”

They walked in silence, their pace so brisk that Oss’ka had a hard time keeping her breath even. She glanced at Thrawn every now and then, studying what she could see of his face, trying to figure out if he really thought he could pull this off.

He and the human, she corrected herself.

He and the human and her, too. The thought made her grimace and at the same time gave her a burst of pained joy. It hurt to even _think_ about surviving. It hurt to think about escaping the Grysks after all this time, or making it back home. 

By the time they entered the clearing, Oss’ka’s heart was pounding and her limbs felt light and jittery, as if they were filled with the sort of mind-numbing starlines that filled the viewport whenever her ship jumped to hyperspace. This could work, she told herself, and almost immediately — by reflex — she tried to quash the hope rising in her. This _couldn’t_ work; this was insane, really; this was going to end in their deaths.

But if it didn’t — if Thrawn was right —

He walked into the clearing ahead of Oss’ka with his head held high, striding confidently toward the human and two Sai Duni huddled near the wreckage. Oss’ka hesitated, glancing around for hidden threats before she rushed to join him.

He looked happy to see the human, she realized; lines of tension that she hadn’t realized were there suddenly smoothed out of his face. The human, in turn, was smiling broadly and lifting his hand in greeting. Still, there seemed to be a shadow over them — and the shadow, as much as Oss’ka could tell, was coming directly from the wreck, coloring their every interaction with a darkness they both tried to ignore.

“It worked!” the human yelled as soon as they were in earshot. Then, jumping up and down with a whoop that made Oss’ka suddenly reevaluate his age, he yelled again, “It _worked!_ ”

She hid behind Thrawn a little as they stopped, using his body as a barricade between herself and the human. From there, she could study the Sai Duni prisoners without being noticed. Only … they didn’t look like prisoners. Not really. 

Peithh sat with his back against the hull of the wreck and his broken leg propped up before him. He looked old — older than before — but calm. Next to him, haggard and breathless, her fur soaked with sweat, was Uleppe. She met Oss’ka’s eyes and didn’t smile, exactly — didn’t seem capable of it.

But her eyes tracked to Thrawn next and she made no move for him. Her hands were untied, but she didn’t reach for her blaster. Her feet were free, but she didn’t try to sneak away while his back was turned and attack him or the human from behind.

Her nose didn’t even twitch.

“You _have_ done it,” Thrawn said, sounding satisfied and faintly surprised. His eyes were on Peithh.

“Well, _yeah_ ,” said the human, clearly offended. He lowered his head and removed the _oth’ola endzali_ from around his neck. To Oss’ka’s surprise, he didn’t simply toss it over to Thrawn; he crossed the distance between them instead and placed the pendant respectfully in Thrawn’s open palm. “Don’t sound so disappointed,” the human said.

“I’m not.” Thrawn looped the wayfinder around his own neck and hesitated, his fingers wrapped around the tarnished metal, his face relaxing even more. “We must see to the Sai Duni in the ravine first,” he said calmly, “before their life-goals destabilize them further. And then we can see to those in the ruins. Ezra—” He turned, extending his hand to Oss’ka. “This is Oss’ka, the Sai Duni’s navigator. She is Force-sensitive, like you.”

The human smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. Her eyes, like theirs, were tracking over the clearing. But unlike them, she was looking for something that wasn’t there. Something that should have been; something that was very conspicuously missing.

“Where’s Fossk?” she asked them. 

* * *

He flew over the ravine first, before he did anything alse. The fighter he’d brought with him in the ship’s hangar bay was a smooth ride, the best the Grysks were willing to offer to a Sai Duni slave, and it handled well in the atmosphere of Sera Dun. Fossk’s eyes tracked over the landscape of what had once been his ancestor’s home.

It wasn’t beautiful, really. He’d always thought it should have been, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t ugly, either. He glanced at the pale green trees and yellow grasses and found, almost disappointed, that he felt no fondness for it at all, and no contempt, either.

And why should he? It wasn’t _his_ home, he supposed.

He swooped low along the ravine’s perimeter, ignoring the Sai Duni soldiers who stood to watch him. There — where the men inside the gorge refused to go — was the narrowing tunnel Welbh had described earlier, over comm. Peithh had been over-cautious, advising them not to advance further lest they get caught, but as Fossk flew overhead, he saw that the narrow tunnel never quite became the culvert Peithh expected it to. 

His thumb brushed over the trigger for the lasers, but he didn’t fire, refusing to widen the tunnel and allow the men of Arkka and Bayna Squadrons to filter out. The Sai Duni in the ravine would either find a way to escape or die there — and if they died, then they didn’t deserve to call themselves soldiers, anyway.

Besides, he needed to conserve his fire.

He swooped away from the ravine without delivering aid of any kind. He headed for the _Chimaera_ instead.

* * *

“Fossk is cunning enough, “ said Commander Peithh, his voice grim. “He has a streak of insubordination. If I had to guess, I’d say he doubled back to the ships we brought with us when the boy—” He gestured to Ezra. “—started his attack.”

Thrawn frowned into the forest, his face more closed-off now than Oss’ka had ever seen it. “You did not notice a Sai Duni slipping away?” he asked Ezra. His voice was even, the same politely inquisitive tone Oss’ka had heard Peithh use with subordinates in the past. 

“No one specifically,” Ezra replied, his frown matching Thrawn’s. “It seemed like just about everyone was heading to the ruins, like we—” He glanced Oss’ka’s way, realized her role in the matter, and grimaced. “Like we planned,” he finished apologetically, looking her right in the eye.

Stung, Oss’ka looked away. She’d think about this later — how Thrawn and Ezra had used her like a tool to lure Mossil and the elders to their deaths. She wouldn’t think about it now. 

Right now she had more important things to worry about.

“Fossk isn’t like the rest of the Sai Duni,” Peithh continued. “He kills whether it’s his life-goal or not.”

“So do many soldiers,” said Thrawn evenly. He looked over his shoulder at Peithh, seeming to appraise him, and to Oss’ka’s surprise, Peithh met Thrawn’s gaze and nodded. 

“Yes,” he said. “And as you know, some soldiers take it too far.”

They shared a grim look. After a moment, Thrawn detached himself from Ezra’s side and approached the two Sai Duni commanders instead.

“You know this man well?” he asked, his eyes darting between the two.

“Peithh knows him better than I do,” said Uleppe. She seemed distracted, disinterested in the situation. Her eyes tracked to the forest and Thrawn followed her gaze.

To Peithh, he said, “You believe he will come here?”

“Yes,” said Peithh, his voice firm.

“Then you should go,” said Thrawn to Uleppe. He handed her his blaster without hesitation, a move that had Oss’ka taking a hasty step back, her eyes wide. Ezra and Peithh, she noticed, did not react at all. Uleppe stared at the blaster a moment and gave Thrawn a hard look.

“Rescue your men,” he said softly. “From the ravine.”

When Uleppe only stared at him a moment longer, trying to read his face, he nodded toward the forest.

“There is an underground tunnel approaching the ravine from the northwest,” Thrawn told her. “You will recognize it by my scent. Don’t stop, and don’t use your communicator until you’re ready to act. Fossk may still be within range.” He paused, studying her to see if she understood. Whatever he saw in her face, he must have approved.

“Go,” he said.

Oss’ka tensed, certain Uleppe would not obey — but in the next moment, Uleppe was hurrying past Oss’ka and through the clearing without a word. 

“Commander Peithh,” Thrawn said, watching her go, “your fighters are parked south of here, near the remains of our shelters, yes?”

“Yes,” said Peithh. Then, anticipating Thrawn’s next question, “But Fossk won’t approach from there. He’ll have circled around, scanning the area first. And he’ll expect us to watch from that direction, so…”

“So we stay here,” Thrawn concluded, his eyes tracking up the wrecked hull of the _Chimaera_. “And we wait. Ezra?”

Oss’ka looked at the human boy and saw that his eyes were closed and his hands stretched out before him. She took an uneasy step closer to Commander Peithh and sank down beside him, careful not to brush his broken leg. Across from her, Ezra’s lips turned downward, a line appearing between his eyebrows. His face was pale; sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

Very slowly, he rotated to face north.

“I feel him,” he said. “He’s heading our way.”

And then, opening his eyes to stare directly at the sky:

“He’s heading our way _fast_.”

* * *

“They’re leaving us,” said Welbh when the fighter passed over the ravine one last time and flew away. 

Laerm stood, his heart pounding and his eyes wide as he watched it go, and he would have stood there frozen forever if it weren’t for the tone of Welbh’s voice when he said those words. He snapped his head around, studying his brother’s face.

“Welbh?” he asked.

Welbh’s limbs were shaking. He curled his knees against his chest and clasped them there, hiding his face. Still, even from this angle, Laerm could see the flesh of his cheek twitching, pulling back from his teeth in a harsh but steady tic.

“They’re not leaving us,” Laerm said as firmly as he could. He glanced down the ravine at the rest of the men. Some of them were stable; most of them weren’t. And all of them were staring up at the sky, waiting for the fighter to return.

 _Obey,_ a voice hissed in Laerm’s ear. His shoulder jumped, a tic he couldn’t help. There was no way to obey, he wanted to argue. They were doing the best they could. 

But you couldn’t argue with the life-goal. He shook his head and tried to find another way.

“They’re not leaving us,” he said again, louder this time. A few heads turned his way. “Commander Peithh would never leave us behind. Commander Uleppe would violate her own life-goal to see us safe. You know this, all of you.”

He remembered how Peithh and Uleppe had failed to answer his calls. He glanced down at Welbh, knew that no one could violate their life-goal, no matter how strong their will. He’d seen parents kill their own children rather than betray the Grysks.

He scanned up the ravine walls, where the fires started by their target were starting to gutter down. Not that it helped them much; they still had no way to climb out. He looked down the narrow pathway to the ravine and glanced at Welbh again.

Welbh’s spine was rigid, his jaw clenched tight. His eyes were rolled up into the back of his head as his cheeks twitched.

With a deep, shaky breath, Laerm reached for his weapon. His hand trembled over the grip; he couldn’t quite get his fingers to close.

“The Chiss is still alive,” he told Welbh, quietly, urgently, for the fiftieth time. “Look at me, Welbh. I don’t care what Fossk said — we didn’t fail. He’s still out there, and we’re not disobeying by staying here, we’re _trapped_. We don’t need to punish ourselves. We can’t attack. Don’t let the directive convince you otherwise.”

But Welbh didn’t respond. Around the other side of the rocky shelf, he could hear two of his men scuffling, a silent struggle — for a weapon, maybe, or perhaps just an outlet for the stress they were all under. He knelt beside Welbh, put his hands gently but firmly on either side of his jaw, tried to get him to look Laerm in the eyes.

Welbh’s cheeks twitched. His eyelids fluttered closed. It was working, Laerm thought. He saw his brother’s hand lift and held still, thinking Welbh would pull Laerm closer to him and touch their foreheads, the way they had always shown respect to each other since their parents died.

But Welbh reached for his blaster instead.

* * *

Uleppe had just found the tunnel entrance marked by Thrawn when she stopped, caught her breath, and held her communicator to her lips.

“Commander Uleppe to Arkka and Bayna Squadron,” she said. “I’ve found you a way out. Coming in now.”

Her only answer was static.

* * *

There was an empty hole in Peithh’s mind where his life-goal used to be. He’d never known what it felt like without the dark, oppressive slime of the Grysks oozing into every coil of his brain. He’d always envisioned their influence as a physical thing, like the black sludge that blood turns into once it’s had time to congeal; he’d never once envisioned how his mind might look without them.

Now, even as he watched Thrawn and Ezra face the woods and wait for a threat to arrive, Peithh could think of practically nothing else. Pain throbbed in the broken skin around his tibia; the fur there was matted with blood, and the only thing Peithh could do to keep his focus was twist his fingers in the fur there and twist. Not ten meters away from him, he saw Thrawn’s hands curl into loose fists, the edge of his thumbnail pressing into fresh plasma burns along his other fingers.

He looked past Thrawn, to the patch of soft earth he’d seen from the bridge of his ship. The mass grave. The boy, Ezra, had told Peithh and Uleppe there was nothing wrong with survival, but he was young. If Thrawn had been here at the time — if Peithh had time to ask him — he suspected he would have heard something very different indeed.

He was still mulling it over when the shriek of laserfire split the air. 

Ten meters out, Ezra and Thrawn reached for each other at the exact same moment, both reflexively pulling the other back toward the wreckage. They’d barely made it to Peithh and Oss’ka by the time Fossk’s fighter screamed by overhead. The ground where they’d been standing moments before seemed to explode spontaneously, clods of dirt thrown free by the lasers as Fossk passed by.

There was no cover for them out here, Peithh thought grimly. Only inside the _Chimaera_ would they be safe, and even then — not for long. The ship’s shields were long since defunct; all they could do was play the waiting game.

He watched, barely cognizant of Oss’ka pressed against his side, as Fossk’s fighter circled back over the trees.

“Thrawn,” said Ezra calmly.

Watching the fighter, Thrawn shook his head.

“Now, Thrawn,” Ezra said. His voice was urgent; his eyes were on the fighter, too. 

“You’re certain?” Thrawn said, not looking Ezra’s way. But Peithh was studying the boy — could see the resignation in his face and the hard set to his eyes.

“I’m sure,” Ezra said.

A fresh burst of laserfire tore through the ground ahead of them. Moving deliberately and without fear, Thrawn took a step to the side, shielding Peithh — as if his body would protect anybody when the lasers reached them. The wail of the fighter’s engines was deafening, and it was only getting louder.

Oss’ka hid her face in Peithh’s shoulder. He closed his eyes, wrapped his arm around her and pulled her to his side. He could feel Thrawn’s boot brushing against his uninjured leg, and he could hear the lasers coming closer, closer—

And then, subtly but surely, the hull of the _Chimaera_ started to move.

“ _Now_ ,” Thrawn said, and before Peithh could open his eyes to see what was going on, he felt a weight slam into him — Thrawn’s weight — and he and Oss’ka both were thrown flat against the ground. The lasers were right upon them now, the sound so high and plaintive it could have made Peithh’s ears bleed.

He heard the sound of lasers hitting durasteel, not dirt.

He looked past Thrawn’s shoulder and saw the wreckage of the _Chimaera_ hovering, floating high above them in the air.

“What—” Oss’ka breathed, lifting her head. Peithh didn’t get the chance to answer her; lasers screeched into the hull as Fossk took another pass, trying and failing to maneuver past the floating wreckage to shoot at them — or Thrawn — or the boy who stood before them with his hands raised and his face white with strain. Thrawn pushed himself to his feet, dragging Peith with him — and Oss’ka, by proxy — until all three of them were several meters away, directly beneath the ship itself.

“What—” Oss’ka started again. She cut herself off this time, her eyes fixed on the wreckage above her. She swallowed audibly. “What are you letting him do?”

Thrawn’s face was tight. He wrapped Peithh’s right arm around his shoulders, allowing the Sai Duni to take the weight off his broken leg, but his eyes never left the fight before him.

“Watch,” he said.

And Peithh did, but he didn’t see what good would come of it. The _Chimaera_ was a mighty shield — but it was a heavy one, too, and unmaneuverable, and the boy could only block Fossk for so long. The fighter, a hundred times smaller than the _Chimaera_ , flitted in and out of sight like a weltfly circling larger, slower prey.

Fossk was a good pilot, Peithh remembered, his tongue heavy and his mouth dry. For now, Ezra used all his concentration and skill to tilt the _Chimaera_ as much as he could, blocking Fossk from whichever angle he tried. But the boy could only keep this up for so long; the ship was nearly the size of a city and it was only a matter of time before it would fall, or Fossk would get past it somehow, and either way the four of them would be crushed.

“Watch,” said Thrawn again, and he pointed — not at Fossk, not at Ezra, but at the sunlight streaming through the trees from the west. For a moment, Peithh stared obediently, uncomprehending. He caught on only a second before Oss’ka did; he heard the sharp catch of breath in her throat and knew she saw it, too.

But from _Fossk’s_ angle—

The fighter dipped its wings and fell suddenly, hard and fast — too fast for Ezra to bring the wreckage around to block him. It swooped down until it skimmed the torn earth of the clearing, leveled out in time to avoid a crash, and barreled forward again, Fossk’s skill keeping the fighter under control. Its lasers were aimed under the _Chimaera_ , directly at Thrawn.

With a burst of power from the engines, Fossk’s fighter surged forward in a great, frenetic leap—

—and just as it crossed beneath the _Chimaera_ , the sun shimmered off the monofilament net Thrawn had strung to the edges of the hull, and Fossk’s fighter crashed right into it.

His fighter veered, tried to reverse. The net shook. The wings of the fighter strained but could not break free and the _Chimaera_ , buoyed by Ezra’s trembling hands, rose higher and higher in the air, careening back toward the west and taking Fossk with it. Peithh’s neck craned; he watched the sun come out from behind the ship, its shadow eaten away by light.

The wreckage, and Fossk’s snared ship with it, stopped hovering the moment it reached the trees. It was not quite high up enough to send debris flying; the _Chimaera_ splintered the trees beneath it unceremoniously, dropping back to earth with a ground-shaking thud.

And crushing Fossk beneath it. 

There was silence in the clearing. Peithh could hear only his own breathless gasps for air. He felt Thrawn unhook himself, gently, from Peithh’s arm and he leaned backwards, searching for support against the nearest tree. Oss’ka was frozen, her shoulders a taut line as she watched the wreckage settle into the earth once again.

Across the clearing, Ezra collapsed.

* * *

Oss’ka watched, saying nothing, as Thrawn approached the boy’s body. Peithh needed her; she wanted to stay; but he waved her on and eventually, reluctantly, she went. If Thrawn noticed her following, he didn’t show it. He walked too fast for her to catch up.

He’d used them, Oss’ka thought. He’d protected her from the explosion at the ruins, he’d been honest with her afterwards, he’d even comforted her in a way — but each of those actions amounted to nothing more than damage control. When he looked at Oss’ka, he saw a Navigator, she suspected. Not a Chiss girl. He saw an asset, a tool to be used, and he saw the exact same thing when he looked at Uleppe and Peith.

He’d saved her. Maybe he’d saved them all, she thought. But he wasn’t a good person, not like some of the Sai Duni he killed. Maybe not even like Commander Peithh, who saw himself as a dead man and had no assets left, and had still tried to protect her when Fossk attacked.

But Thrawn _was_ , Oss’ka thought, a good leader. And even if he wasn’t what she’d hoped he’d be, it was clear that to him, _Ezra_ wasn’t just an asset. Even if the rest of them were.

When she reached them, Thrawn was kneeling at Ezra’s side and taking his pulse. His face was set; his jaw was a tight line. With careful hands, he undid the straps that kept Ezra attached to the biosupport rack and rolled the boy over, pulling the splintered remains of the rack — and the injured ysalimir — out from under him.

He handed them both to Oss’ka and pointed to the woods.

“Force exhaustion,” he murmured, and when she didn’t move immediately, he pointed again.

 _Privacy,_ she thought. Maybe that was all he wanted. Privacy to mourn an ally or rethink his plan. She took the ysalimir back to Peithh, set it beside him. When he looked a question at her, she shook her head.

“He’s not breathing,” she said.

And then she went back, saw Thrawn kneeling over Ezra and clutching the _oth’ola endzali_ around his neck, saw the look on his face, and wished she’d stayed where she was. She stopped in her tracks, legs frozen, unable to move further.

She hadn’t asked him yet — maybe never would — where he’d gotten the wayfinder. A sister, maybe; his mother, if sky-walkers ever had children. Perhaps he’d even been married once, before all this. But it didn’t seem to matter. He removed the pendant from around his neck and held it in his hands, staring at the tarnished metal like he’d never seen it before and would never see it again.

He pressed his thumbs against the silver-blue glow in the center of it, took a deep breath, and snapped the _oth’ola endzali_ in half.

He murmured something that might have been in Basic, or maybe some dialect of Cheunh — he said it so quietly that Oss’ka couldn’t be sure. She watched the blue glow coalesce, lingering in the air even when Thrawn lowered the broken remnants of the pendant and laid them flat on Ezra’s chest. And then, a second too late for Oss’ka to tell herself it was all just a trick of the light, the blue glow followed the pendant down — past Thrawn’s hands — and sank into Ezra’s skin. For a moment, she could see the glow inside of him, muted, like his skin had turned nearly translucent, and then it faded away.

He opened his eyes and took a breath as if nothing had happened. When he tried to sit up, Thrawn stopped him gently, one hand on Ezra’s chest.

“Rest a moment,” he said.

With his other hand, surreptitiously, he took the deadened metal that had once held his brother’s life Force and tucked the pieces away.

* * *

When Uleppe arrived at the clearing with what remained of her men, she saw she wasn’t the only one who’d been busy. The wreck of the Chimaera had somehow been displaced, leaving a massive depression in the ground where it had once been. Her eyes tracked automatically to the boy, then away again. 

The Sai Duni who had gone to the ruins and been neutralized were back again, their posture stiff and almost offended as they surrounded Thrawn and Ezra.

Who both had their hands tied.

Uleppe skirted the edges of the clearing, found Peithh standing not far from the ‘prisoners’ with his blaster raised. He caught her eye, tipped her a smile so faint no one else would see, and shrugged. His smile was artificial; his eyes were hollow.

She gave him a grim look in return and said, “Seventeen dead in Bayna Squadron. Three in Arkka.”

He accepted the numbers without comment. His eyes flickered to Thrawn and Ezra, one of whom was better at playing prisoner than the other.

“His idea?” she murmured, inclining her head ever-so-slightly in Thrawn’s direction.

Peithh only smiled again. Around her, she saw the twitches and tics of the Grysks’ life-goal starting to fade from her men, each of them thinking they’d done their job — that the Chiss was caught.

“How long do you think it’ll take him?” she asked, her eyes on Ezra now. Peithh was silent, counting their remaining men.

“It didn’t take him long with us,” he said ambivalently. Uleppe said nothing, waiting for him to be honest with her. When he finally met her eyes, something squeezed painfully in her chest and she had to fight not to look away.

“I don’t think he’ll succeed,” said Peithh, his eyes pleading with her. Pleading with her to do what, she didn’t know. “Not with all of them,” Peithh said. “Not everyone can be helped.”

She nodded and turned away, weaving silently between her men. She walked past Laerm without a word; his eyes were as hollow as Peithh’s. He was a good man, she thought. He’d have been easy to break before this battle.

She glanced down once, briefly, at the body he’d insisted on bringing back with him, and then away. When she glanced up, she saw Thrawn — his face turned to the sky — and felt something constrict in her stomach.

He’d saved them, she thought. Some of them. But he’d killed some of them, too. And the boy next to him, with the hard jaw and the defiant, uncertain eyes, had helped.

She made her way past them, not intending to speak. 

A hand brushed her fingers as she passed the prisoners, subtly and silently getting her attention while the men were looking the other way. She looked down at Ezra — he was the one who’d touched her — but the boy evaded her eyes. It was Thrawn, she realized, who wanted to speak.

His red eyes bored into her. Leaning over, he said in a whisper so soft it may have been nothing more than a breath, “Take your time.”

Pain lined his eyes, the most clear expression she’d seen on him all day. Beside him, the human’s jaw was tight.

“Make sure you have all the survivors,” Thrawn said. " _Make sure._ "

Uleppe nodded. Again, his eyes tightened. Again, he spoke so quietly she could barely hear.

“Bury your dead,” he said. 

* * *

It took fifty crewers at minimum to man the Sai Duni’s flagship. They had two hundred — more than enough for the task at hand, not that it comforted Oss’ka much. She settled down at the helm as she always did, her pilot conspicuously gone.

Thrawn and Ezra would be transported to the brig for now, and from there, as the five of them had discussed, Ezra would get to work silently on the life-goals of the Sai Duni soldiers who’d survived. Those who broke would be welcomed into the crew. Those who didn’t … well, it was up to Peithh to decide. 

And from there…

 _Do you know the way home?_ Thrawn had asked her.

Oss’ka’s fingers tightened on the console before her. At his command station, Peithh caught her eye and nodded, but didn’t quite smile.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and gave herself over to the Sight.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Scenes Deleted // Content Restored](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357947) by [draculard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard)




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